DROPPING YOUR G’S. A friend sent us a link to this article by Charles C.W. Cooke about the history of pronouncing the “g” at the end of a word. We think of pronouncing the “g” as being correct, but Cooke argues that dropping the “g” was the historical usage. He quotes a poem by Jonathan Swift from 1699 which rhymes “fine in” with “lining” and cites Bertie Wooster and King Edward VIII to show that dropping the “g” persisted in the English upper classes in the first half of the twentieth century. The innovation of pronouncing the “g” arose in Britain, beginning in the 19th century. Americans who pronounce the “g” tend to live in Eastern or Southern cities, and seem to have been influenced by British usage.
The change in pronunciation is an example of oral usage following the printed word.