It’s pronounced Gif, with a soft G as in Graphics.
I don’t give a fuck what the idiot creator thinks it should be pronounced as, I’ll die on this hill with my honor intact, surrounded by the corpses of everyone who thinks Jif is referring to anything but peanut butter.
It’s pronounced GIF (sounding out each letter), like in that ‘If Google Was A Guy’ CollegeHumor video. Just so that it doesn’t annoy or antagonise anyone for a meaningless purpose. Everyone wins.
Or, maybe both pronouncers (the “jiff” gang and the “giff” crowd) will team up against me for saying that. At least we’ll have harmony for most people if that’s the case, and I’ll be a sacrifice to keep the peace.
Take the word “gift”. Say the word, but stop before you get to the last letter. What letters did you say? What sound came out of your mouth? Case closed.
Take the word “applet”. Say the word, but stop before you get to the last letter. What letters did you say? What sound came out of your mouth? Case closed.
All this could be solved if people would accept that English changes over time and if defined by usage and understanding.
If people easily understand what I mean when I say gif then I have pronounced it correctly. Same as if people understand what I mean if I use “literally” to mean “figuratively” or spell “island” with an ‘s’ despite it having no Latin roots.
If it impedes understanding and causes to person you’re talking to take more time and/or effort to understand the message you are trying to convey then it is incorrect.
There is a small extra cognitive shift where the brain realizes those aren’t typos or random letters and are intended to represent those words, so it does add an impediment to understanding. If it became common for people to write them as ‘r’ and ‘u’ then over time that would become correct.
Just like if it was common for people to pronounce “gif” one way and then someone came along and said “Well the creator wants it pronounced another way” the correct response is “who gives a fuck? This is how the word is used now.” The ‘creator’ of the word “island” did not have an ‘s’ in it, but no one is arguing for it to be spelled “eyland”.
You re-read sentences much more often than you might suspect and it happens with all kinds of sentences, even grammatically correct ones. Garden-path sentences, for example “the old men the boat”, are specifically crafted to demonstrate this and they essentially are doing the same thing as using ‘r’ and ‘u’ as a substitute for words: they violate the Gricean maxim of manner and that one relies a lot on expectation.
However, one could make a case that in some situations, like a “how r u” via text, the replacement is ubiquitous and somewhat expected and doesn’t cause any impediment to understanding. It’s definitely a hinderance when a more verbose communication is expected. Might be a neat subject for a phonetic study, honestly.
All of this could be solved if people actually cared about finding a reasonable solution. We don’t fight about it because it’s worth fighting over. We fight because it’s in our blood. We must fight to satisfy our primal urge for conflict.
So take up your keyboard, mouse, phone, or any other weapon that suits you. Join me in the battle of “gif vs gif”, and may the best warrior find victory.
I understand, but ‘Island’ has an ‘s’ in it. This was a done as a stylistic choice to Latinize a word that has no Latin roots, and it caught on. English is a mongrel tongue with it’s rules defined by how the unwashed masses use it; You’re fighting a losing battle.
But they don’t easily understand you. You’re being deliberately lazy and shifting the onus of putting mental work into the conversation onto your conversational partner. Now they have to work extra-hard to deciphwr your gibberish. The decent, respectful thing to do is treat them as an equal, and put an equal amount of effort into achieving communication.
Or I could just tell you to flarfle your garglax. Seems perfectly clear to me, so obviously you’re in the wrong if you complain.
I agree, it’s stupid, but arguing against it is “old man yells at cloud” territory. The fact is if I said “I literally couldn’t get out of bed this morning” the meaning of that statement is well understood.
It isn’t really used to mean figuratively though. It’s used as an intensifier, and all of its synonyms are as well. And they all have been for hundreds of years. Really, truly, honestly, actually, etc. Seems so strange to me that this is the single word from the group that gets dogpiled on, and the perception that it’s some new phenomenon, Mark Twain used it in the same manner.
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