- Geography
- Geology
- Giraffe
- Generous
Just a few examples that come to mind. Additionally, the pronunciation of the individual words included in an acronym DOES NOT determine the pronunciation of that acronym. See SCUBA as an example.
Good and very informative, thank you.
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I’m still gonna pronounce it (G)IF though.This, and Gig Git Girl Gibbon Gift Gill Giddy Gigahertz Gimmick Gizzard
I always called it jit 😭
Jit is not git!
As long as you don’t shame others with reasons that don’t make sense, you can pronounce it gif for all I care
Sure, agree to disagree.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iafa959JvY - Literally this but with any example either way depending on what side you’re on.
It’s GIF. Just because you create something doesn’t mean you aren’t fucking dumb. Eventually, it’s no longer yours anyway lol.
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Counterpoint: Gift
Literally has gif in it and is pronounced with a hard ‘g’.
Counter counter point. The inventor of the gif said it’s pronounced like the peanut butter. It’s already been settled.
We don’t pronounced words by what other words they contain. “Americano” is not “American+o.” “Fare” is not “far+e.”
For some reason, the hard G advocates for “gif” seem to make up fake language rules to justify pronouncing it wrong.
JPEG is the best direct example. Who pronounces the F sound?
For your SCUBA example, is it the U you’re talking about?
Underwater vs oonderwater?
Scuhba vs Scooba?
Also, the A stands for Apparatus, so it should be scuhbah since it’s Apparatus, not uhpparatus
Yep the U. Scubba dubba doo!
Scuhba has me laughing.
do you have a problem with my ˌɡiˈʁafə
OBJECTION!!
First and foremost, pronounced Gif there
Graphics Interchange Format. Not Jraphics. Unless you spell it out as Jee-Ai-Eff
Also, git isn’t spelled “jit”, it’s not “jit gud”, nor “jit hub”. Other examples that would be wrong: jirl, jirth, jiddy, jirder, jingko
Most of the ‘ji’ sounding words are rooted from other languages, mostly French (some of them brought over from Latin). Finally, languages where ‘ge’ and ‘gi’ sound like ‘je’ and ‘ji’ say ‘Gif’
By that logic, “scuba” should be pronounced scuh-ba, and “laser” should be pronounced lah-seer.
Also “jee” is also how you say the letter “G”.
Gin, Germany, giraffe, gypsy, gib, giblet. Raising examples of words that start with hard and soft Gs is absolutely pointless when both exist and are equally valid.
Why are people arguing about how an acronym is pronounced in the English language anyways? Who gives a shit? When you point out a “rule” in English, there will always be exceptions, many exceptions, to that rule. Even English doesn’t even agree with English: “entree” means appetizer in Europe but main course in the US.
So why do you care so much?
So why do you care so much?
Because it’s always fun to poke fun at how chaotic, anarchic and directionless the english language is. Besides, some of its rules feel more like suggestions
It is gif
Amen 🙏
Who fucking cares
I was tired of this shit 15 years ago and it’s still “”“”“pissing”“”“” off people
Nonono, you don’t understand, flame wars build character! 'Twere the early aughts that made me the healthy and well adjusted person I am today!
Or at least, that’s what I’d say if what actually happened wasn’t that I became a jaded bastard and if I didn’t think it was just some ploy to drive engagement to let OP feel popular for a moment… in the best case scenario
If you don’t want to participate in a thread, move the right thumb in an upward flicking motion.
Well, you see, the g in gif stands for “graphics” which is ultimately from Greek “γραφικός,” and because this is the 21st century, γ in front of a close front vowel is pronounced as neither /g/ nor /d͡ʒ/ but rather /ʝ/, which is pronounced a bit like English’s y, so in its purest rendition gif is really pronounced “yiff”, which doubles as homage to the online communities that OP frequents.
If you’re supposed to pronounce it based on the original word instead of how the person who invented it says it, then I’d like to see giff crusaders take on everyone’s terrible pronunciation of words like SCUBA (the U stands for underwater, so should be UH not EW) and NASA (the first A stands for aeronautics so should be pronounced Nair-sa).
Don’t worry, I was being 100% facetious! After all, γ is generally believed to have been a hard /g/ in Ancient Greek, which is the version of Greek that “graphic” is based on and is CLEARLY the wrong way to say gif :D
Kinda sorta un-jerking (but not really) for a moment, I don’t think that I’d include the rhotic in your hypothetical pronunciation in NASA and thus would say /neɪ.sə/ over /neɚ.sə/. I also don’t palatalize the U in SCUBA (/sku:.bə/, not /sk^(j)u:bə/), but I suspect that’s just a dialectical difference.
Edit: I just saw your NZ lemmy instance name and now I understand the vowel choices. Cheers!
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Gerry the gentle giraffe went to the gym with the generous gem of a gymnast Geoffrey (the giant ginger who wears gentlemen’s hair gel and studies geometry). Genius!
That’s the gist, generally. Then, gyrating, giblets jiggling , he mixed a gigantic gin and ginseng.
^ this person gets it.
People are so weird about this. Yes, G’s often sound like J’s English is weird. The inventor gets to have the say, he called it “jif”, great, it’s “jif”. To say it hard g “gif” and act like all G’s sound the same is just announcing one’s own ignorance. Weird take. Welcome to English!
English is filled with weird duplicative shit. Ex: Why do we even have C’s anyway if we could use an S or a K? “Accident” one C is “kuh” and one C is “Suh”. WTF English?
The inventor can call it whatever he wants, but it’s not going to change the pronunciation that has stuck with the general public. Language isn’t some decided upon thing that one person gets to control, it is a tool that naturally evolves and changes over time as it spreads from person to person
It’s pronounced however the fuck you want to pronounce it.
I like to pronounce it “jif” because gin, gentle, Germany, gypsy. Others like to pronounce it “gif” because gift, good, game, girl.
Don’t pull any bullshit reasons like “it’s not pronounced jraphics”, because if that argument holds any water, JPEG is jay-feg, scuba is scuh-ba, and laser is lah-seer.
The creator calls it “jif” and wants others to call it “jif”. I don’t give a shit; if some people want to call it “gif”, that’s up to them and I’m not stopping them. English is not a prescriptive language; pronunciations will always differ according to origins and regions and accents and generations. I will not misunderstand you if you pronounce it “gif”, and you will not misunderstand me if I say “jif”.
jay-feg
Babe wake up, new pointless acronym controversy just dropped
This should be the top comment, thank you for putting into words exactly how I feel fellow jiffer
By calling it “jif” I think the creator was referencing “jiffy,” as in “fast.” It’s like a video, but it loads in a jiffy. Or: it’s a short looping video - it’s over in a jiffy then restarts again.
I think people that call it “gif” don’t intuitively get this, even at the subconscious level. If they did, I think they’d prefer “jif.” It’s much more fun IMO. Not to mention that it’s less likely to be mistaken for an existing word (gift). So it’s both more fun and more practical. What else do we have to do to convince you people :(
It’s a reference to Jif peanut butter’s ad campaign.
“Choosy moms choose Jif” was used as “Choosy developers choose GIF”.
Some arguments that people keep bringing up that are all wrong and carry zero weight in this discussion:
- The creator says it’s JIF
- It’s like Gift, but without the T
- It’s like Giraffe, but without the raffe
- It stands for “Graphics Interchange Format” so it’s GIF
- My dictionary says it’s GIF
- My dictionary says it’s JIF
- Obama says it’s GIF
- Giphy says it’s GIF
Ultimately, language is very dynamic and changes all the time. Words change their spelling, their meaning and their pronunciation too. Dictionaries tend to lag behind a little bit, but the fact that they publish a new version every year signifies how much languages change. The creator of a word can coin a pronunciation, but ultimately has zero control over whether it will be adopted or not.
So therefore whichever way most people actually pronounce it is by definition the correct pronunciation. And the polls done on this subject are pretty clear, showing that GIF is the preferred pronunciation, chosen by up to 70% in North America and over 80% in Australia and the UK. This depends on which poll you use, but in general the split is at least 2:1 in favour of GIF, and over time the usage of GIF tends to trend up over time.
So ultimately, the one true pronunciation is GIF, as decided by the people as a whole. However, most dictionaries do list JIF as an accepted alternative pronunciation, due to the not insignificant minority pronouncing it that way.
In other words, just choose which pronunciation you prefer, and use that. And try to avoid the pointless debates people like to have on the subject, filled with arguments that don’t carry any weight whatsoever.
It’s funny reading this with the soft-g pronunciation and imagining you arguing with yourself saying, “it’s gif! No, gif! No, gif!”
Gesus Christ
gust jet over it.
Juys gust jet over it
How do you pronounce gin? How do you pronounce giraffe?
How do you pronounce gift?
Or girl or gill?
That may be a perfectly reasonable argument, but also, YOU’RE WROOONG, GIF WILL NEVER BE JIF
Jraphics Interchange Format
Scuba = Self-Contained Oonderwater Breathing Apparatus
Blame english blame english blame english blame english blame english
I blame the people who put way too much stock in the stupid argument.
i dunno if a lot of people know this but there is a image extension file called JIF
Even though I pronounce it “jif” too, I am tired of seeing arguments that rely on how other words are pronounced. You are not helping the cause, as these arguments are too easily countered. There are much more convincing arguments to be made, such as how “jif” is more practical since it can’t be confused with “gift,” and how the creator was making a reference to the word “jiffy.”
The creator of the format, Steve Wihite, says it’s pronounced as JIF, but personally I still say GIF out of habit.
https://www.cnn.com/2013/05/22/tech/web/pronounce-gif/index.html
I’ve had similar arguments with people over the pronunciation of Linux, with one person saying it’s “Lie-nicks” because it’s named after “Linus”, but Linus himself has said he pronounces his own name differently depending on the language he’s speaking at the time, but Linux is always pronounced “Lynn-icks.”
It’s like hearing people who work at Asus call it Asus instead of Asus.
The only reason they’re saying it’s Asus is because they have to. They say Asus like everyone else at home.
Also, after a certain amount of time, the word you made up is no longer yours. That be how language works yo.
At this point GIFs in their original form as .GIF files barely exist anymore. GIF basically just means “short clip”. Why would the author get any say at all at that point?
Why isn’t this higher up? Thanks for the real info, I was going to post this if no one else did.
I hate the way it’s pronounced. It should be like Line-ix, but the creator of it decides so as ugly as it is to say it’s lih-nucks.
The creator of the format says “JIF”, so I say it as well.
He came out with that after almost 30 years of watching people fight over it. Yeah no, I’ve been saying [G]IF since 1996 and it’s not changing now. He can shove his JIF where the sun doesn’t shine.
It’s well documented going all the way back to 1987 when the format was first coined that it was always a soft g. Compuserve had it in their official memos. An early gif had the pronunciation embedded as a comment in its code. Witnesses attested that the creator would go around the office saying, “Choosy developers use gif,” a play on “Choosy moms choose Jiff.”
“I’ve invented a thing! I call it a cup!”
You: “wow I love chup, everyone come look at this cool chup”
Doubling down on being wrong just makes you double wrong.
I don’t recall ever hearing what the actual pronunciation was until ten years ago. Was there a whitepaper or anything? The name spread by word of mouth. He should have done a better job of making sure it was being called what he wanted to call it. It’s like trademarks. You don’t use it, you lose it. For fucks sake he’s been sitting in the shadows since 1987 just chilling and then busts out with the “official” one in 2013.
No he didn’t. They literally sold it as “choosy developers choose gif”. It was part of the marketing to software devs. He didn’t feel the need to say anything on fucking stage until normies started using it and couldn’t understand context.
When he invented it he named it after the penutbutter.
The slogan was “choosy developers choose gif” to parody “choosy moms choose jiff”.
I use the same metric and use the English pronunciation of words as an American.l, because they’re correct and we are wrong.
I’m considered a hipster douche for it.
Others are correct to say so.
Al-uuuuu-min-eee-umm
Yaw-gert
Tuh-mot-o
Aluminum was an either or from the start and it just happened which side of the ocean got which and that they weren’t the same
Yeah but what the Brits eventually chose should go.
The only other option is to bomb the UK into oblivion and change the language’s name to American, and I’m a pacifist, so I’d rather just say it the correct way as the owners dictate without murdering them and declaring the language ours now.
You can have different dialects in the same language. American English is a dialect of English that is different from British English.
Just like Coca Cola and generic off brand garbage cola!
They’re equally, pfff, valid!
But clearly he’s an idiot.
Is there any way I can convince you that you sound like an idiot?
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This is actually an issue that should be solved at the English level. All words starting with a ‘g’ that are pronounced ‘j’ should be written with a ‘j’.
Girl -> Girl
Giraffe -> jiraffe
GIF -> GIFSee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_reform
English has been the total outlier among (originally) European language with no body of authority over its spelling. Even the “reform” by Noah Webster never really caught on outside North America, nearly 100 years later. And even more curious, the somewhat authoritative Oxford English Dictionary disagrees in their spelling with everybody (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling).
I like your way of thinking. Now, what about damned “Pacific Ocean”?
Pasifik Owshyn
Blame english instead of people probouncing the wrong way. English don’t give a fucking clue about pronounciation only using letters.
So I can pronounce Blamei as Lemmy. [B silent, a - e sound, mm and m can be pronounced same, and ei can be read as y]
I’m more interested in what probouncing is.
Well probouncing is pronounced as pronouncing
Man. I thought it was gonna be a bit more giggity than that
Jiggity?
We speak the language and pronounce new words based on the past words of the language. There are exceptions but they don’t negate the defaults.
Nearly every single word in English that starts with a g followed by a soft ih/eh vowel is pronounced as a soft g, just a few:
gin gypsy general gerund Gerald gel gem gyp Geronimo gesture
In fact, there are something like 20,000 words in the dictionary that start with G and the number of them that are pronounced with a hard G is such a small fraction of them that it has its own wiki page.
This video is a tad harsh for comedic effort, but otherwise entirely fact based and sourced:
Bottom line: you’re free to use a hard G, but it’s not the default pronunciation based on either all other English words or the creator’s intentions, and if you’re confused why others pronounce it with a soft G, they would seem to be simply more familiar with the English language 🤷♂️
I say G,i,f as in I pronounce it like an acronym
I pronounce “gif” with a soft g to annoy people, and even I hate this.
That’s a funny reason to do the right thing but whatever works
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Nearly every single word in English that starts with a g followed by a soft ih/eh vowel is pronounced as a soft g, just a few:
That is patently not true and blatant cherry picking, e.g. already contradicted by the lexically matching word “gift” (and there are “giggle”, “gild”, “girl”, “git”, “give”, “gizmo”, etc.). See Wikipedia, which referenced linguists studying this:
An analysis of 269 words by linguist Michael Dow found near-tied results on whether a hard or soft g was more appropriate based on other English words; the results varied somewhat depending on what parameters were used.[11] Of the 105 words that contained gi somewhere in the word, 68 used the soft g while only 37 employed its counterpart. However, the hard g words were found to be significantly more common in everyday English; […]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_GIF#Cause
Michael Dow is an associate professor in linguistics with specialization in phonology, by the way.
and if you’re confused why others pronounce it with a soft G, they would seem to be simply more familiar with the English language 🤷♂️
Well, clearly you are already not as “familiar with the English language” as you might think.
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