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The creator of the GIF format says it's pronounced like Jiff, like the peanut butter.
He's wrong, even though he created the format.
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.
Acronyms are words. They're words formed out of the initial letters of a phrase or name.
I went and looked it up.
Acronym is the most correct term. GIF can be an initialism or an acronym, however it becomes an acronym when we pronounce it as a word.
I’m not going to get into a debate over it obeying word rules when it starts as an initialism. That’s for scholars and asklemmy shenanigans.
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.
There is no such thing as a "hard g" or a "soft g". There is a g sound, and there is a j sound.
Yes, I will die on this hill.
How do you pronounce bridge or baggage?
Brij
Baggaj
Yeah, a soft g is kinda just a j
With J sounds, of course.
Bajjaj
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?
It isn’t 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.
That's dumb, It's "Graphics Interchange Format."
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?