The author calls it JIF. He intended it as Jif because he has butter fingers and like butter brand JIF.
I'm used to hard G though.
I know he says it’s pronounced “jif”, but I just don’t care. It’s like “gift” without the t
Let's be honest here, English does not have that level of consistency. "Women" is pronounced with an "i" for christ sake
Because the a in woman is pronounced the same way the e in women is pronounced...
Probably that was originally introduced by some medieval swinger society, so they could say that they are faithful to their women and technically not be lying about it. When the church figured out they introduced the o as an i thing.
Because the a in woman is pronounced the same way the e in women is pronounced...
woman = wum-en
women = wim-in
Yeah I'm gonna have to disagree with you there, chief.
i always eas taught the plural to be pronounced as "wi-men" I also cannot remember any english TV show or so to talk about wimin, so where the second ibis explicit as an i and distinguishable from an e
Say the word "though" in your head. Then add a "t" to it. Would you really argue that "though" and "thought" are pronounced the same simply because they're the same spelling save for a final "t"?
The easiest "rule" is that the creator can decide how to pronounce and spell it lol. Taking English rules that don't even apply 100% of the time to its own words and trying to hold made-up words to the same standards just sounds silly to me haha
Yeah, I always read it as "Jif" then came the correctness police of Reddit and I was bullied into "Gif" by guilt.
And now some 8-40 years later, I feel anything but "Gif" is wrong. Help!
Can you really just drop a hard G like that though? Thought that was only okay for them to say
I'm sorry, but he waited 26 years to tell everyone how it's pronounced... at this point you can go with the majority, or stick with however you want to pronounce it.
Nobody made english, nor is a language static. It is an everchanging result of millions of people using and evolving it.
A language that doesn't change is dead, like latin is. So any rule of how something is supposed to be in a language is subject to time and place, but never absolute.
That's my point. If everyone pronounces a word a certain way, THAT is its correct pronunciation. The first person to say a thing doesn't get to tell everyone else they're wrong.
Everyone started using the word "literally" to mean figuratively, so the official definition changed to mean either or.
Everyone says GIF similar to gift, then that's the proper pronunciation. Creator has no say.
English doesn't work that way. Man is the closest work to woman. Doesn't mean you pronounce the "m" "a" "n" in the two words the same way.
English works like all languages. It's organic and full of exceptions. New words pop up, old ones die, pronunciations change and differ between similar words.
Most people chose to say gif like gift. One person doesn't get to change it just because of who they are. Otherwise celebrities can start changing things.
This is all like the Mean Girls scene where the girl was trying to make "fetch" happen and the other girl shot her down.
This makes no sense. It stands for "Graphics Interchange Format", do they pronounce it jraphics too?
There are so many examples in this thread alone as to why this rule doesn't work.
SCUBA: the U is for "underwater" and the A is for "apparatus". We don't pronounce it "SC-uh-B-ahhh".
JPEG: The P is for "photographic". We don't pronounce it "JayFeg".
LASER: The E is for "emission". We don't pronounce it "Lay-See-R".
RADAR: The second A is for "And" (lol). We don't pronounce it "Ray-Day-R".
The easiest "rule" is just the guy who made it up can dictate how they want it spelled and to pronounce. The word is made up anyway, and isn't subject to rules that actual English words have been subjected to for however long the language evolved.
The guy that came up with with the acronym for unidentified flying object also wrote that it should pronounced you-fo but everyone spells it out because that is less confusing. So there is an example of the creator being ignored.
Yep, I take your point
Seems an odd choice in gif's case still, as you can use the starting letter sounds from each word and it doesn't sound weird.
Not the same for jpeg. P by itself doesn't make a ph sound.
I don't really give a fuck what he intended. If he wanted it to be pronounced JIF he should have named it that.
I feel that if you're going to bother people who pronounce it "Jiff" because Graphics, you have to also say "Sc-uh-bÆ" and "Lass-ear" and "ray-dare."
English is phonetically inconsistent, you can find examples to support both ways of pronouncing it.
There are some consistencies in letter patterns, just not in individual letters. For example, no word that starts with go-, ga-, or gu- pronounces the g like a j (except for the archaic gaol, and there's a reason the spelling was changed to jail). It's mainly limited to ge- and gi- words.
Inconsistencies with the other options are probably due either to how the term came into English (English is practically built on loanwords) or some other subsequent pattern of letters I'm too lazy to try to identify.
The only real rule is that words come and go and change organically. People don't just decree that a word needs to change like some king of language.
Hard G and soft G are both acceptable pronunciations, the only way to be wrong in the situation is to insist that your preferred way to pronounce it is the only correct way to pronounce it
Oh, except silent G. Silent G is wrong.
I will never not smile when this comes up. Not because of the word, but because of Linus.
In English the correct way to pronounce something is the way that will most reliably communicate to your intended audience without ambiguity or distraction.
Since my intention is usually to convey my superior knowledge of trivia and/or to stir shit up, I pronounce it with a soft g.
If it were gyf or gir, then it could have been gyro or giraffe. But no, it was a gift of gif.
I hate you feel that way. Can I get you a jift to make you feel better?
It will be a guygantic jift. A large external drive that can hold MANY jiggabytes. Just be careful, it will take a lot of power. 1.21 jiggawatts at least.
That's easily the worst reasoning for the hard-g considering how we don't pronounce the letters of most acronyms based on the phrases they come from.
yeah man, just like you go scuba diving oo-nderwater.
it's a dead end. We can't pretend that "g" can't also be pronounced as "j", or that the words making up the acronym matter. It's all preference and since GIF's dad called it "jif", I'm gonna call it "jif". At least that's based on something beyond my own hubris.
This is my thinking - as far as I know he actually called it that as a reference to jif peanut butter.
Saying it with a hard G because ‘graphical’ has a hard G is a reason based on something beyond hubris.
I don't really care for a logical explanation. JIF just sounds fucking stupid and yall know it.
That's how I feel about Giff though -- yuck what an ugly word.
I grew up eating Jif and we loved it
Not to mention it’s literally a “Choosy devs choose GIF” joke, aping “Choosy moms choose Jif”. Soft-g homies for jife.
This comment section is killing me lmao.
You have people saying that language is fluid, and that one person cannot decide which pronunciation is correct. Then, in that same comment, they say that their preferred pronunciation is obviously correct.
Hard g, soft g, you do you. It really doesn't change much.
This is fair. My only issue is with those that go "but the creator says it's pronounced this way! The other way is clearly wrong!" as if what the creator says actually matters. It doesn't. Especially when said creator waits 26 years to announce how he pronounces it.
I pronounce it "zhif" like the sound from zsa zsa Gabor's name. It irritates everyone equally, and gives me a happy.
Also, if you're familiar with the gnome/guh-nome debate on the Linux side of the playground, pronouncing it with a glottal stop at the beginning will give everyone around an immediate stroke.
It's pronounced gif with a hard G.
When I rise to power anyone who disagrees will be immediately found guilty of thought crimes and sentenced to castration, followed by execution, in that order.
When I first encountered the .gif, I read it as G-I-F, as in jee aye ef. From there it was a jiffy to pronounce it as jif.
We were literally told it was pronounced "jif" by the creator. Sorry if it hurts your little feelings
Whoever invented all the words in that sentence certainly didn't pronounce them like you do.
I mean, id pronounce them the way the creators said if they were here and specifically told me how to pronounce it 💁🏻
I'm 99% sure the creator was either being sarcastic, or he decided to be a contrarian for the internet clicks. "GIF" is an acronym that stands for "Graphics Interchange Format". It makes very little sense to intentionally pronounce it like a peanut butter brand.
Of all the arguments this one always feels like the absolute weakest. There are so many acronyms that are not pronounced like that it's unreal. Unless you commit to pronouncing it jayfeg for the rest of your life...
actually, gif is an acronym. Specifically not an initialism. That means that it is pronounced as a single word (like "scuba", but unlike "fbi" or "nsa").
The pronunciation of the acronym does not have to conform to the original pronunciation of the letters.
Examples:
the "p" in jpeg stands for the "ph" sound, but we pronounce it as a hard "p".
The "u" in scuba stands for "underwater". We still pronounce it as "scOOba" not "scAAba"
So why is "gif" any different? Its creator chose the soft G for the pronunciation of the acronym (not its expansion), and therefore it is the correct one, simply because there is no rule about how it should be pronounced, so the choice was his. He made it
Contrarian when he said "choosy developers choose gif" (implying the soft g) in 1987? I think that precedes the internet debate a little
Yeah not everyone is from the US and had that brand. The soft g has always made sense as much hard g, especially if you say the words Gin or Gym besides it.
I'm also convinced he did that just to be an annoying contrarian back in 2013 when he announced how he pronounces it.
Dude likely never actually cared.
He waited til 2013 to come out and say that though, when he made it back in 1987. What he wants doesn't matter.
The most popular way to pronounce a word wins; Sorry if it hurts your little feelings.
The British are the creator of the English language but they pronounce nearly every word wrong.