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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.
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.
deleted by creator
So no one should be able to say ‘sontimeters’? Cause that’s super distracting.
For the same reason I like to pronounce jraphics.
I love you
Man that’s so clever and new. Like a giraffe drinking gin
Or a guitar gift.
In a garage.
and jraphics interchange format
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.
And British people made English, but they don’t say anything right either.
But the food is delicious.
Little ironic… but ok.
I know he says it’s pronounced “jif”, but I just don’t care. It’s like “gift” without the t
Or like “gin” with an f?
Ginf? That’s a new one.
No, you’re supposed to replace the letter, not add it, so “fin”
gfn
Oh come on, you know what I mean
Never. No.
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-inYeah 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
It’s more like giant or gin or giraffe.
No, it’s more like give or get or girl.
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
There are no rules to how new words come into being or how old ones change.
If everyone says a word a certain way with certain meaning, then that’s what it is. One person doesn’t get to decide.
Could easily be ‘thof’.
Can you really just drop a hard G like that though? Thought that was only okay for them to say
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!
> Help!
Absolutely not, I don’t say this often but those bullies did the right thing.
Do you pronunce it guilt or juilt? Okay bad question
How do you pronounce giraffe? or giant? or gin?
I thought it was at least jood.
He didn’t intend shit. He just wanted to watch the world burn!
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.
Good thing word coiners don’t get full control over word usage.
They do though when they are right.
He made the format, not English.
Ya and in English, we pronounce things like giant, giraffe, gin, etc. with a “j” sound.
Find me a closer English word than “Gift” that uses a J sound for the G
Gin
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.
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.
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.
How do you pronounce JPEG? Jay-feg?
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.
So how do you pronounce giraffe or giant or gin?
How do you pronounce “graphic”?
How do you pronounce “underwater?” (It’s the “u” in scuba)
Copyright concerns?
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’ve always thought he’s just playing a huge prank on people.
Same, tbh.
To be honest, it really doesn’t bother me either way
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.
I respect this
It’s very fun. Try it out on some people. Lol.
I don’t really care for a logical explanation. JIF just sounds fucking stupid and yall know it.
I call it Jife just to piss off everyone.
Zhaif! XD
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.
Nah, too damn close to jizz.
You should see a doctor and stop eating peanuts immediately.
I’m guessing you sip on ghin and juice (laid back)?
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.
yiff?
nah fuck that i’mma be unapologetically weird and scruffy
life’s too short to give a fuck
In that case, yodspeed my dude
How do I delete someone else’s comment
Gif you say so
No Gifs or Gbuts
Gigh, as the Scots pronounce it. That’s the only way.
Based and true
Hard R would also be wrong.
I will never not smile when this comes up. Not because of the word, but because of Linus.
The innocent “what?! No!” :D
I say jif. But when heard someone say jithub instead of github i felt the cringe
Not this again…lol it’s gif god damn it!
I did used to say gif but now I say gif.
G in gif stands for graphics just like how P in jpeg stands for poto
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.”
Don’t forget Nay-saa.
Gesus Krissed…
He did what now?
Krissed all over the sopa
Did you shampoo my wife!?
Wait until they find out about scuba and laser
skubba
> G in gif stands for graphics just like how P in jpeg stands for potato
FTFY
yeah it’s not “jraphics”
Next thing people will be pronouncing SQL as “sequel” and then where will we be?
That one makes perfect sense though.
No it’s absolutely Squirrel
“Squeal”
As in “databases will make you squeal like a piggie”
Squirrel like “who the fuck tore through this and denormalized it”
Nowhere good, that’s for sure.
Jood Gob with this.
Look, I say Jif, but this meme is hilarious. Can’t we just stop the silly fighting?
No. My hard drive still has 1.21 more jigabytes of free space available for more memes.
Jijabytes
Jiggity jiggity
What the hell is a jogabyte?!
And how do you pronounce giraffe? Giant?
And how do you pronounce gift? Gondola?
The guy-ant ger-raffe jave me a jift on his jondola.
See, the one thing I consistently see from the hard g side is a lack of understanding of fundamental phonics. Like, say it how you want, but at least make cogent arguments.
Wilhite says jif, I use jif. He created it, he gets to name it.
If he didn’t want people to pronounce it two different ways he should have spelled it differently.
Right? And people get mad at me for saying gur-affe at the zoo. They should have spelt it different if they wanted me to say jir-affe.
Anyway, back to work on my jithub project.
I feel that way about studio ghibli
Yeah, that one’s just weird to me. It’s literally written “Jiburi” in Japanese.
Yea, should have. As another commenter posted, Wilhite should have called it the jraphics interchange format.
He didn’t tell anyone it was pronounced jif till a great many years later, after most people were pronouncing it gif.
He lost the right to dictate how everyone else pronounces it for that reason alone. So fuck him. =)
Edit: It was made in 1987 and he waited till 2013. Lmao, he lost that fight long ago.
I understand that some people feel very strongly about pronunciations. So be angry about the correct pronunciation, heck, don’t use the correct pronunciation, who cares?
But Wilhite made it, so he gets to name it, regardless of the popularity of later pronunciation debates that largely take place in a forum where you can’t actually pronounce the word because we’re all typing. It’s pretty funny.
Gerrymandering was named after Elbridge Gerry, but his name is pronounced Gary: https://youtu.be/Rp0Qz19nlG4
Popularity of pronunciation does actually matter, regardless of origin.
There are plenty of pronunciations that have changed from the original and are now generally accepted as correct. Here are some examples
https://linguisticus.wordpress.com/2014/12/07/10-words-whose-pronunciation-has-changed-over-time/
Anywho, if you have any recommendations for birthday jifts for kids, lemme know
Nice! Read the related comment by this juy: https://lemmy.world/comment/1832124
So be angry about the correct pronunciation
I’m not angry about the correct pronunciation, since I and most people already do pronounce it correctly. As Gif, not Jif.
But Wilhite made it, so he gets to name it
You’re right about one thing; he named it. But he doesn’t get to dictate how it’s pronounced many years later after the majority had already been pronouncing it a certain way. If he wanted it called Jif, then he should have said so from the very beginning. Why wait till 2013? Doesn’t that seem odd to you? Dude likely doesn’t even care and only declared that in 2013 to start an argument over it.
regardless of the popularity of later pronunciation
I’m sorry but the popularity of how a word is pronounced does in fact actually matter. Plus, the English language is changing all the time and how we pronounce certain words also changes. People will say what feels most natural to them.
that largely take place in a forum where you can’t actually pronounce the word because we’re all typing. It’s pretty funny.
I’ve used the word Gif in real life, multiple times. Everyone I know pronounces it the same way. 🤷🏻♀️
However, you want to pronounce it is fine, but it doesn’t make it correct.
I don’t think there’s a time limit on announcing the way a creator prefers to pronounce the name of his creation.
It became an internet sensation, people asked him about the correct way to pronounce guf, he said how he prefers to pronounce it.
I prefer to pronounce it that way as well, as the original pronunciation by the creator. That’s more correct to me, but nobody’s forcing you to pronounce it any particular way.
but it doesn’t make it correct
Except it does. This isn’t the first time to happen with the English language, and it won’t be the last.
I don’t think there’s a time limit on announcing the way a creator prefers to pronounce the name of his creation.
Sure, but the most popular way to pronounce a word wins, and it isn’t his way.
people asked him about the correct way to pronounce gif, he specified how he prefers to pronounce it.
Yea I’m aware, I read all about it back in 2013 as well.
That’s more correct to me, but nobody’s forcing you to pronounce it any particular way.
That’s nice. Now you know why the majority continue to pronounce it as Gif and not Jif, because it’s the most popular and comfortable way to pronounce it. The creators opinion on the matter is inconsequential.
Cheers!
This is interesting, you’re kind of proving yourself wrong. If “The most popular way to pronounce a word wins”, as you say, then why are you and others still so ardently supportive of one pronunciation(deemed correct by the inventor) or the other(deemed incorrect by the inventor)? Seems like if you had won, there wouldn’t be any debate.
It just sounds like you’re making the case that coba-bola should be the new name for Coca-Cola. That can definitely be your name for it, and you can try to convince as many people as you want of a name that you prefer. But it doesn’t change the original and correct name of that beverage.
Sure, follow the majority. While majority rule often turns out to be incorrect and it doesn’t seem like the right way for me to make decisions or judgments, it’s certainly your prerogative to pronounced jif the same way many other people do.
For you, a hard g is more popular and comfortable, and that’s great. Doesn’t make it correct, but it’s still great.
For you, a hard g is more popular and comfortable, and that’s great. Doesn’t make it correct, but it’s still great.
Actually that’s exactly what makes it correct, language is democratic. The more popular way to convey ideas is the correct way, as that is the entire purpose of language (to convey ideas to other individuals) and that’s why language changes over time.
I got to be honest with you, but I’m already over this topic, so I’m not even going to read your latest response to me. There really isn’t anything new either of us have to share; you pronounce it one way, the majority pronounce it another. The end. Have a good evening/night/morning/etc.
Most people pronounced it correctly. Hard G was mocked on many tech sites and sites like 4chan.
You mean “jif” was openly mocked, and still is for the most part. Anyone referring to it as Jif is typically viewed as pretentious.
But you are correct about people pronouncing it correctly; as Gif. =)
Soft G was only recently psedo-mocked on tech-stupid subreddits.
Ah, yes “Jrafic interchange format”
Acronyms are not pronounced based on the words that form them.
Giraffe
Let’s not forget: Giant Gin Ginger Gingivitis Gibberish Gypsy Gerbil Gentle Gender George Gina Ginnie
Gel Gif
Ah, yes. NaySAh(NASA), SaKUBA(SCUBA), MeDAS(MIDAS), JayFEG(JPEG), RADiR(RADAR) …
Underrated comment here
That’s what the inventor chose, so yup. Unfortunately, jif is the correct pronunciation.
My favorite example of this is aluminum. Twice now, I’ve spoken to British English speakers that insist aluminum is pronounced the British way. And when I point out aluminum is an American invention, they check their phone, roll their eyes, and accept that I can say it that way, but they never will.
And euphonically they’re correct, the British pronunciation of aluminum sounds way cooler. I used to use gif until I looked up the usage history specifically for these moments, hahaha. But that’s not its name. So I use jif.
There’s a concept in linguistics known as descriptivism vs proscriptivism. We either accept that things change meanings and pronunciations regionally and over time, or we try to absolutely state that there’s one correct way, and every other way is wrong.
A major issue with the “I’m right you’re wrong” approach is the in-group decides who is right and wrong. Regional slang is just wrong, not an equally valid way to speak. Those with formal educations are inherently more correct, and thus their grasp of their native language is more correct. This doesn’t really make sense when you think about it, other than to put down groups perceived as lesser.
Additionally, academics can convince themselves of one thing, and totally fail to be relevant to the real world. This leads your average person to become disenfranchised with academia and talk about how academics in their ivory towers have no understanding of how the real world works.
Anyway, that’s why I pronounce it joeff.
Very nicely put. I always noticed this phenomenon but ascribed it to people clinging to schemic security blankets, but it’s good to know that there’s a term that describes the illogical dependence on evolving correctness.
Aluminium sounds cool if you’re British and aluminum sounds cool if you’re American. How do the other English speaking countries say it?
I’ve only heard the British and American version myself
Unfortunately, jif is the correct pronunciation.
Incorrect. I’ve already covered why in previous comments though.
Back at you.
