Anyone who uses the argument that Graphical is pronounced with a hard G sound needs to think about how they pronounce other acronyms, like SCUBA, NASA, LASER, SONAR, POG, SIM… the list goes on.
It’s flattering that you think anybody knows what all of those acronyms actually stand for. I’m semi-certain of NASA, the rest could just be made up for all I know (as a non-native English speaker).
One thing I learned recently is that if GIF shall be pronounced “GIF” like the G in Graphical, JPEG shall be pronounced “JFEG” like the P in Photography
How do you pronounce the U in SCUBA? How do you pronounce the two As in NASA? The A in BASE jumping? The O in POG juice? The O in SONAR? The I in SIM card? The A in LASER?
I went looking for it, and apparently you’re right. He said “Jif”. He’s either trolling or being obstinate. People don’t see it that way, especially seeing as it’s the hard “G” from “Graphical” in the initialism. So he’s applying a pronunciation rule of soft G when followed with “i” when used in a word to an initialism - and acronyms aren’t words (noted: they can become treated as such).
GIF is not a word. So soft “g” when followed by “i” does not apply.
E: corrected to initialism, and now we have to debate if an initialism pronounced as an acronym should obey the soft G rule, or if it should be an exception. Exceptions do exist, so the soft G is not a hard rule.
The funny thing is that even though there are people on both sides dead set they are right, if they hear someone say the opposite pronunciation they still understand what the speaker is referring to. So there's absolutely no context lost, it's just preference, and I have a feeling given the age of the name GIF those preferences are very regional, as the internet had not become a national/international thing yet.
It’s almost like there is no rule when pronouncing acronyms and people choose to pronounce them however sounds best to them. How do you pronounce the U in SCUBA? How do you pronounce the two As in NASA? The A in BASE jumping? The O in POG juice? The O in SONAR? The I in SIM card? The A in LASER? None of those are pronounced like the composite letters, so why is GIF so rigid?
The soft G with the following i is common. There are exceptions to that rule, so it really isn’t always a rule.
Also, GIF is an initialism, and an initialism pronounced as a word becomes an acronym. I really don’t want to debate whether an acronym has to obey “real” word rules.
Add comment