- 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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https://piped.video/watch?v=9iafa959JvY
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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Counterpoint: Gift
Literally has gif in it and is pronounced with a hard ‘g’.
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.Do you have any examples of words changed by adding a consonant? Additional vowels in words, such as your examples, usually change how a word is pronounced
Also, your attack in the second paragraph is unneeded and contributes nothing to the debate. If an argument cannot be based on logic alone, I ask that you do not make it.
Tom and tomb
And I agree, I’ll remove it.
I acknowledge that you fulfilled my request but personally remain unconvinced using those examples. Tom is generally a nickname for Thomas and borrows pronunciation from that.
However I did remember the words kin and kind but there’s also tin and tint. So I’m just going to declare English overall as highly inconsistent and silly, will still pronounce gif with a hard g, but recognize that you have a different point of view. 🙂
Tom is a name for a male animal.
“Bot” and “both” may be more your style. Or, to stick with g, “gin” has a soft g while “gink” has a hard g.
LOL, arguing about English pronunciation based on spelling? Really?
Friend this is the internet, if you’re seriously expecting 0 trash-talk with your discussions then you’re in the wrong place.
Counter counter point. The inventor of the gif said it’s pronounced like the peanut butter. It’s already been settled.
Just because somebody who made a word wants to pronounce it a certain way doesn’t mean that’s others will pronounce it.
Heck, look at the at history of the word tomato. Came from the native Nahuatl word tomatl, which was changed to tomate for Spanish and then tomato for English. The British are closer to both the native Nahuatl and Spanish pronunciations of the word but few Americans will say it as “tuh-maa-tow”.
I mean that’s literally how it works. You pronounced the peanut butter with a soft J. You probably pronounce Lyft as Lift and JoS A Bank as Joseph A Bank. What a company chooses to name its product (gif was a product trying to be sold to software devs) they can choose however they want it to be pronounced. If you stop thinking of gif as a normal word and more as a product that was and continues to be sold then it makes a lot more sense why they literally gave it a catchphrase; “choosy developers choose gif”
And the person we’re responding here to also uses an example of language that evolved to what it is over a 300 year period FROM changes that happened between language barriers - Central American natives to Spanish to English (of which there are 2 variations).
The hard G or soft are pronounceable by the majority of the world. It’s not really a language barrier or change - it’s just inability to admit that maybe they were wrong in how they read it in their head and make the verbal change when evidence is provided.
With that said, they can continue to pronounce it with a hard g but it’s just being obstinate at this point.
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
Scuhba has me laughing.
Yep the U. Scubba dubba doo!
My giant german friend George Gerard gestates and raises giraffes in genuine need of gentle geriatric care. Such a gentleman.
It’s jif.
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The letter G itself is pronounced “jee”.
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Soe Wee shud spel ahll owur werds funehtikly? And if uh werd iz nott speld funehtikly itz rong?
Because that’s ridiculous. You know perfectly well that letters can make different sounds depending on the word. Stop being obtuse.
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
You clearly didn’t even read the whole comment. Acronyms do not need to be pronounced according to their constituent words.
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Obviously it’s pronounced the same as the the “g” in “gigantic”
The second g in garage.
Been pronouncing it that way since Idea Channel :)
ʒaɪf ftw
I never realized how contradictory this word is. Thank you
I pronounce it like the “g” in “design”
as if
I, too, subscribe to the Danish pronounciation of G
The life of the wife was ended by the knife in that GIF!
Oh I’m definitely pronouncing it zhif from now on!
I just love Jraphical Image Format.
I’m pretty sure I’ve heard people pronounce gigantic both ways though lol.
Guy-gantick makes me thing of an Englishman.
Jai-gantick makes me think American.
Nobody has ever once said guygantic. Not ever.
You did, right now, after I already did. Check, mate.
Shit, you win this round
(There are 2 Gs in the word “gigantic”)
Even better Jai!
JaiJantick.
GuyGanTick.
GuyJanTick
JaiGanTick.
I would never correct how someone pronounces gif, but…
- Gin is a tasty drink.
- Gerunds are verbal nouns.
- Gentrification is a trend in urban environments.
- Gifs are poorly optimized internet clips with controversy surrounding their pronunciation.
Giraffes are tall.
Long horses? That begins with an L
horses arent real
Give - the v is just f but voiced from a phonetical standpoint
It is gif
Amen 🙏
I used to be adament about gif with a hard G until I had a coworker insist that
sudowas pronouncedsoodoorather thanpseudo. like yeah, I know it stands for sUpEr uSeR dO but you can never get me to not say it the other way.I’ve been using Linux for like 18 years and I will never say soodoo. I will die on this hill.
In my head I thought of it like a psuedo su and thought sudo was clever, then learning it is like soodoo and I’m highly disappointed. I still say it like psuedo in my head. I use arch btw.
it’s not like gif stands for jraphics interchange format.
neither does it stand for giraffe interchange format.
nor does it stand for geranium interchnage format.
but if you’re sharing gifs of giraffes or giraniums, i suppose that’s allowable.
The p in jpeg stands for photographic, but you don’t pronounce it a “jay-feg”.
By that logic, “jpeg” is pronounced jay-feg, “scuba” scuh-ba, and “laser” lah-seer.
Such a dumb argument that never holds up.
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
What general public? I’ve heard it pronounced both ways often by many people. There is no agreed way to pronounce it. Even the dictionary recognizes both ways. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/GIF
There is no agreed way to pronounce it.
so you agree then that one person doesn’t get to decide what the pronunciation is, and there is no “official” way to say it (although, the majority of people use the hard g - source)
lol, no, I’m saying pop culture hasn’t decided yet, silly.
I just find the weirdos who forget soft G’s exist ridiculous.
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”.
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.
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 /neæ.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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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!”
I wouldn’t say the arguments are all wrong and carry zero weight. How are you so sure that these arguments haven’t swayed the majority towards one side or the other? These arguments are happening between actual people (I’ve heard normal people discuss this outside of online communities), possibly shaping their opinions, and could be what’s shaping those 70/80% numbers.
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No view lost lol what are you talking about, both ways are correct, but it’s fun to give the others shit about it, it’s just like rooting for your basketball team
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Who fucking cares
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
Gaded bastard
I was tired of this shit 15 years ago and it’s still “”“”“pissing”“”“” off people
If you don’t want to participate in a thread, move the right thumb in an upward flicking motion.
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 -> GIFGordons Jin?
I like your way of thinking. Now, what about damned “Pacific Ocean”?
Pasifik Owshyn
Paowoific ocishin
See: 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).
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.”
gust jet over it.
Juys gust jet over it
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.”
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’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.
Sir or madam or otherwise, that is not how words work.
I once saw a garden center with the french word “soleil” (pronounced “so-lay”) in the name, everyone in the area pronounced it “so-leel”, but just because the French don’t kick down the doors and correct people doesn’t make “so-leel” any less incorrect. There is a correct and an incorrect way to say words, frequency of usage is irrelevant.
That’s kind of how language works. If everybody in the local area understand each other perfectly fine, then it has served its purpose.
Theres’ a town in my region called “Purcellville”, and everybody not from the area including Google will pronounce it as “PurCELL-ville” as spelled out, but every single resident within the town will insist its “Perc-UH-ville”. Which is the “wrong” pronunciation. But the people in that town literally don’t give AF.
Whether the people give af or not is irrelevant. If the founder(s) of the town intended it to be pronounced Purcellville, the people are wrong. If the founder(s) said percuhville, then they’re not wrong.
The founders are long dead and nobody alive has ever heard them say the name. That’s how language changes from one into another over time. That’s how we got all the thousands of unique languages on Earth.
First, it’s an accent. Then over time, it becomes heavier and heavier until it eventually becomes a brand new language. Words may even be borrowed and used from other languages and changed as well.
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Look friend, be wrong if you want. That’s your prerogative.
The french didn’t create the word “soleel”, the founder of the garden center didn’t name his business “soleel”, the word “soleel” does not exist. Everyone who uses the word “soleel” is wrong. Usage is irrelevant, the creator gets to decide. Period. It’s jif. Be wrong or be right, your call. Just own your decision.
I learned a new word today that I think can help here by way of a story. “Ooftish” is the word, it’s a Yiddish word that translates in English to money. And I don’t know a lot of Yiddish words, but I’ve been getting into etymology so I read more about it. The word comes from a phrase that means “money on the table”, and the phrase was pronounced roughly “gelt af tish” (from one snapshot in time, anyway, according to wordsmith.org, this isn’t meant to be an absolute) where gelt is the word for money and tish is the word for table.
That made me wonder, how did this word “ooftish” come to be, because there was a word in the ancestor phrase that literally meant money already. One idea: someone that maybe didn’t speak the language but had been exposed to it heard someone say “gelt af tish,” understood enough context to know money was being spoken about, and took the part of the phrase they remembered and started using it to refer to money. And then it caught on. That doesn’t have to be true to make my point, because the next part is really the important part of the thought experiment.
Imagine this person starts using this word “ooftish” and it catches on as an inside joke among friends. They teach their kids, it spreads, more people are now using the word. It’s still a local thing, but it’s catching on. Another couple generations, and it’s become the defacto in-group way for a population to refer to money. But they’re all talking about a prepositional phrase referring to some unnamed thing that is situated on a table, and they’ve all long-forgotten the birth of the phrase and never use the word “gelt” at all anymore. Let me ask you: Is that entire population wrong today for using the word “ooftish” even though it is a linguistic travesty in this hypothetical world? Or does it make sense for them to keep using the word, because they all know what they mean when they use it and it would actually be more complicated to try and backfill this word with the more linguistically pure word that was used before?
You can’t use logic like “everyone else is wrong but me” about language, as satisfying as it would be sometimes to do so. We use language to communicate, and if we’re trying to get a message across, we communicate in the way that best accomplishes the need at hand - sharing an idea with others. That means the way words are used by a population is more important than grandstanding over how anyone thinks particular words should be used.
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The tag line provided by the creator when the format was created back in 1987 was “choosey image users choose gif” Clearly a parody of a similar tag line from Jif peanut butter.
You are incorrect.
It’s jif.
But clearly he’s an idiot.
Is there anything, at all, that I can do, to convince you, that you sound, like an idiot?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=9iafa959JvY
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
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 soft drinks!
Is he a linguist tho?
