Oooh, that’s how grammar works in English language? Okay, so me as a developer of some obscure thing from this point forward are instructing everyone to pronounce “home” as “hume”, since that’s how you pronounce “o” in “tomb”. I decided that solely because my software is loosely related to the meaning of the word. K thx bai.
Neither did the author of graphic format. GIF is not a word, but initialism, like NSA, FBI, NASA, IBM, etc. And there are specific rules how they are read and pronounced.
NASA is an acronym, not an initialism. And guess how the last letter of NASA is pronounced versus how the A in the corresponding word is pronounced. Ah vs Uh.
Irrelevant comment to the discussion at hand as the matter is not set in stone in English language. More to the point it doesn’t change the fact how GIF is pronounced. Even if you consider it an acronym it’s still a form of abbreviation and not a word on its own with known heritage, hence the general rules on how to pronounce letter g do not apply.
Had the word originate from French part of the English dictionary (like gin, giraffe, etc.) then g is pronounced as j before vowels e and i and would make sense. But Germanic words (such as gift, geese) still use hard g. So applying normal rules is pointless, since English has no such thing.
In short, it’s pronounced whatever the way people pronounce it. End of story.
I may sound haughty and knowledgable when I say JiF then, but between just you and me, I didn’t know a damn thing about this and just decided to say it this way in my brain for reasons that remain unclear.
I always think all the arguments are ridiculous because it’s essentially saying that someone is pronouncing a product (not a word) that they created incorrectly. This product even has a catchphrase for it. There’s literally nothing you can say to contradict that. It’s a product with a catchphrase that describes how to pronounce it. If you pronounce it differently then you do you, but you are wrong.
It’s also pretty funny when it’s about actual product you will get corrected to the intended pronunciation, or at least, allowed because people acknowledge there might be multiple way of reading a word based on where you from. Like potato and tomato.
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
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).
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.
The genius Tolkien, ever generous, gestured for a round of gin martinis from his giant gentle giraffe. Over gentle murmurs from the crowd, I caught the gist of his speech: genuinely it’s pronounced Jandalf.
It will have 1 hour 30 minutes of Sam Merry and Pippin argue about potaeto and potahtoe. And Sauron will spend his time mentioning all the genders and races and gods can’t kill him while he got stabbed in his face.
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