OK, my gut willingly stands corrected: OE ecg absolutely has the soft g, and so my categorical exclusion is simply wrong.
Perhaps I was misrecalling the suggestion that [dʒ] for "J", specifically, was a French import.
Of course, JRRT also moved a bit between theory and practice himself: in his recordings he invariably pronounces the final consonant of Gandalf [f] while himself averring that in 'proper' Norse it would be [v].
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The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.
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