this is something I've found puzzling ever since I read John Fowles' "The Magus" many years ago -- why is 'magus' pronounced with a hard 'g' and 'magi' with a soft 'g'?

>why is 'magus' pronounced with a hard 'g' and 'magi' with a soft 'g'?

There are other examples following the same rule:
Hard “G”
Gu: Gus; Angus; Gut; Gun
Ge: Get
Go: Got
Soft “G”
Gi: Gin; Magic; Tragic; Gibralter
Ge: Gentle; Gentile; Gentry; Agent; Agenda

following the same rule

Be more convincing if it was AnJus or Gus as the alternatives, Jo, since magi and magus are twins.

yes... more to the point, magi it the plural of magus.

While we await one of our Latin scholars (O Faldage, where art thou?) to appear, let me throw in my guess:

To rephrase what Jo said: Just as the C (cf. celtic) was pronounced K in Latin, as far as we know, so was the G a hard sound and not soft (cf. Regina - hard G sound). Today we pronounce the singular and plural as we do because of English conventions governing the G sound in the two pre-vowel environments.

To rephrase what AnnaS. just said:
it's the same as the pronunciation rule for c.
Soft before e and i, hard before a, o, and u.

That's not to say there aren't exceptions--this is English,
after all.

I'm no Latin expert but I know Italian, which has the same rules as outlined (more or less) by jmh above:

G followed by a,o or u = hard G (e.g. gatto (cat))
G followed by e or i = soft (e.g. gelato (ice cream) is pronounced "jelato")
If you need a hard G followed by E or I you stick in an H (e.g. spaghetti)

So magus/magi makes sense to me, in a transferring-Italian-rules-to-English sort of way!

magus/magi makes sense to me

Maybe. What had initially struck me as odd was the change made to the root phoneme <mag> by two different suffixes. This is looking, after all at two variants of one word, not two completely different orthographies embodying general rules. Is this common - I can't think of parralels right now, but doubtless someone can help...

As Jo noted Ge: Get

This is an apparent exception but, by and large, you'll find that the exceptions here will be Germanic words and the Germanic languages didn't go through that softening of Cs and Gs before Es and Is. The change was a purely a physical thing and didn't care that one word in a pair like magus/magi* underwent the shift and the other didn't. It's a matter of what the mouth was doing in the shift from the consonant to the vowel. In cases where the shift, for whatever reason, didn't happen (a word was coined after the shift had happened, for example) there will normally be some spelling convention to retain the hard sound as necessary, e.g. Italian spaghetti*.

* The things Ænigma will come up with. It wants spaghetti to be Spahn and magus/magi to be Maharashtra

It wants spaghetti to be Spahn and magus/magi to be Maharashtra

Ah yes... i know that piece.... "Thus Spake Maharashtra". Excellent horn intro.

"Thus Spake Maharashtra". Excellent horn intro.

What'd you expect ? ... It is 2001.
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I couldn't have said it better myself.

"Sufficient unto the day...." That's a mother of a language, eh, Faldage?

In reply to:

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What had initially struck me as odd was the change made to the root phoneme <mag> by two different suffixes. This is looking, after all at two variants of one word, not two completely different orthographies embodying general rules. Is this common - I can't think of parralels right now, but doubtless someone can help...

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Another example which we're so used to we don't even notice is the difference in pronunciation between the noun house and its plural houses , where the s sound changes to a z sound between singular and plural

Bingley

This is why, when I preach the visit to the Baby Jesus, I just call them "the wise men."

I just call them "the wise men."

Thus spake the wise magistrate

In reply to:

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This is why, when I preach the visit to the Baby Jesus, I just call them "the wise men."

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Magi! Some wise guys. It took them, what, two years to get there? If it had been wise women, they would've stopped and asked directions, and gotten there on time. And they would have brought a helpful gift, like a casserole.

... or disposable diapers.

Sparteye notes: If it had been wise women, they would've stopped and asked directions

If you'll remember, they did stop and ask directions and got half the population of Judea under the age of three killed because of it. And women wonder why we don't stop and ask for directions. Some of us learned our lesson! !

And he SCORES !
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