[texhax] What is???

[Pierre MacKay]

> and what fraction
> with an aspirated "g" (recognising the Greek etymology) ?

Why aspirated?  Ancient Greek has a pairing of unvoiced
kappa and aspirate unvoiced khi, but no pairing for the
voiced gamma. Modern Greek produces a breathy sound for
a gamma before a back vowel "a" "o" "u" (spelled omicron-upsilon)
but has a strong tendenscy to palatalize gamma before "i" "e"

So one would expect either GiGa-, plain voiced G, or, in a more
modern version YiGHa-byte.  For my part, I say GiGabyte, but
I could see an argument for the civilized old 18th and 19th
century British habit, which has no truck with silly foreign
sounds and would prefer JIgabyte, assuming that the neologism
was felt to be legitimate at all

(Written on a competer station in the library of the American
School of Classical Studies at Athens, on the margins of Kolonaki
district.)

Pierre MacKay