German: g vs. g

Hey guys, can anyone tell me how to figure the pronunciation of “ig” at the end of a German word? I had been doing it like “ich” in all cases, but I watched a video where a guy (Rainer Joswig, the Lisp programmer, as it happens) pronounced his name like “ik”.

Have I been doing it wrong, or is this just dialectical?

"ig " at the end of a word it is always pronounced as "ich". The way you are doing it is correct and what you heard was, as you already guessed, dialectical. It is very common in Austria where almost everyone (even the speakers in TV and radio who should know better) pronounce it the wrong way as "ig".

In the middle of a word, as you probably already know, it depends on the following letter: before a vowel it is "ig", before a consonant "ich". The only exceptions are the rare cases when there would be several "ich"-sounds in one word (for example ewiglich or königlich). In that cases it is pronounced "ig" even before a consonant.

It's mostly a dialectical thing. People in the northern parts of Germany tend to pronounce "ig" as "ich" alot. It's also typical for Hamburgisch.