Slashdot Mirror
What's The Correct Way to Pronounce 'GIF'? (thenewstack.io)
"Apparently we're all fighting about how to pronounce 'GIF' again on Twitter," writes technology columnist Mike Melanson:
I personally find the argument of web designer Aaron Bazinet, who managed to secure the domain howtoreallypronouncegif.com, rather convincing in its simplicity: "It's the most natural, logical way to pronounce it. That's why when everyone comes across the word for the first time, they use a hard G [as in "gift"]." Bazinet relates the origin of the debate as such:
"The creator of the GIF image format, Steve Wilhite of CompuServe, when deciding on the pronunciation, said he deliberately chose to echo the American peanut butter brand, Jif, and CompuServe employees would often say 'Choosy developers choose GIF(jif)', playing off of Jif's television commercials. If you hear anyone pronounce GIF with a soft G, it's because they know something of this history."
Wilhite attempted to settled the controversy in 2013 when accepting a lifetime achievement award at the 17th annual Webby awards. Using an actual animated .gif for his five-word acceptance speech, he authoritatively announced his preferred pronounciation. However, the chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary argues that "A coiner effectively loses control of a word once it's out there," adding that "the pronunciation with a hard g is now very widespread and readily understood."
One linguist addressed the topic on Twitter this week, noting studies that found past usage of "gi" in words has been almost evenly split between hard and soft g sounds. Their thread also answers a related question: how will I weaponize a trivial and harmless consonant difference to make other people feel bad and self-conscious about themselves?
Her response? "Maybe just....don't do this."
"The creator of the GIF image format, Steve Wilhite of CompuServe, when deciding on the pronunciation, said he deliberately chose to echo the American peanut butter brand, Jif, and CompuServe employees would often say 'Choosy developers choose GIF(jif)', playing off of Jif's television commercials. If you hear anyone pronounce GIF with a soft G, it's because they know something of this history."
Wilhite attempted to settled the controversy in 2013 when accepting a lifetime achievement award at the 17th annual Webby awards. Using an actual animated .gif for his five-word acceptance speech, he authoritatively announced his preferred pronounciation. However, the chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary argues that "A coiner effectively loses control of a word once it's out there," adding that "the pronunciation with a hard g is now very widespread and readily understood."
One linguist addressed the topic on Twitter this week, noting studies that found past usage of "gi" in words has been almost evenly split between hard and soft g sounds. Their thread also answers a related question: how will I weaponize a trivial and harmless consonant difference to make other people feel bad and self-conscious about themselves?
Her response? "Maybe just....don't do this."
Because choosy nerds choose GIF!
For those overseas or under 30, it's a play on the old Choosy mothers choose Jif peanut butter commercial
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Instead of wondering how to pronounce it, we should be asking "who gives a shit?" This argument was all the rage in the BBS days, in 1989. Today, nobody uses gifs so who gives a shit?
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Please post a link to an animated .png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APNG
Have gnu, will travel.
English is defined, not by the originators of words, or an Academy, but by usage. English dictionaries do not define words, they document them.
If a hard g is the way it is commonly pronounced, that's the correct way.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Language changes with usage, so hard and soft g both seem to be reasonable conclusions. If not, we can always keep going back, all the way to Old English:
the Old English word gif 'if' (pronounced "yiff")
(from a completely unrelated article about entries for the Universal Coded Character Set that has, of course, bounced around the internet since).
It seems to me you have it someway wrong. At least in Greece, which I'll claim is part of Europe, it was "Jif" throughout the 80's and 90's and switched to "Cif" sometime in the 21 century.