diff --git a/src/interfaces/ecpg/Makefile b/src/interfaces/ecpg/Makefile
index 0116ec0db914ce3aa3de5de27efd3cc4a5d922cf..e397210a71192422197f089978235832062e5c99 100644
--- a/src/interfaces/ecpg/Makefile
+++ b/src/interfaces/ecpg/Makefile
@@ -10,7 +10,9 @@ SUBDIRS = include pgtypeslib ecpglib compatlib preproc
 # (There are some other parallelism bugs in the subdirectory makefiles
 # themselves, but there's little point in fixing them as long as we have
 # to use this big hammer.)
+ifeq ($(MAKE_VERSION),3.82)
 .NOTPARALLEL:
+endif
 
 $(recurse)
 
diff --git a/src/interfaces/ecpg/preproc/Makefile b/src/interfaces/ecpg/preproc/Makefile
index 6e117d49c76b2541c1938b9d864d808e77b2d659..583429906769b5ae34613d72a8aeaf4f5b26b9fd 100644
--- a/src/interfaces/ecpg/preproc/Makefile
+++ b/src/interfaces/ecpg/preproc/Makefile
@@ -30,6 +30,12 @@ OBJS=	preproc.o type.o ecpg.o output.o parser.o \
 	keywords.o c_keywords.o ecpg_keywords.o kwlookup.o ../ecpglib/typename.o descriptor.o variable.o \
 	$(WIN32RES)
 
+# Suppress parallel build to avoid a bug in gmake 3.82
+# (see comments in ../Makefile)
+ifeq ($(MAKE_VERSION),3.82)
+.NOTPARALLEL:
+endif
+
 all: ecpg
 
 ecpg: $(OBJS) | submake-libpgport