[wyldfire]

> Lil Wayne has a wonderful line in his song 6'7', "real G's move in silence like lasagna". Unbelievable.

Sorry, I'm too thick. I mentally thought of a gangster moving laterally, splayed out and wondered how it would be quiet. I had to google this to understand that he meant silence like the letter 'G' in 'lasagna'.

[Udik]

Even harder for me, since I'm Italian and the g in lasagna is not silent at all.

[emmelaich]

I think most English speakers would pronounce the gn as ñ.

[Udik]

That's how it is pronounced also in Italian. Gn is a digraph, pronounced like ñ in Spanish. The g is not silent, as it is part of the digraph.

[Dylan16807]

Wow, this is more complex than I thought. It looks like in Italian, you have a single consonant ɲ. In English, ɲ doesn't exist. We say nj, a two consonant cluster, and most people can't properly distinguish the two sounds.

The end result here is that in English the g causes a sound change after the n, and basically qualifies it as a silent letter. This is a subtly different sound from the Italian version, where it merges with the n and does not qualify as a silent letter.