Creator of the GIF Sets Record Straight

It's apparent that people forgot that English is a language with an absolute ASSLOAD of exceptions in it.

Simply because one of the parent words in an acronym uses a different variant of the syllable doesn't mean the resulting acronym MUST.

Here's a few more words that start with soft G.

gentle
giant
gerbil
gestation
gel
ginger
generation
genial
gym
geology
gem
genius
genuine
germ
gerainium
general
giant
giraffe
gentry
geneolo
geography
geriatrics
gene
general
German
giraffe
gypsy

Learn to English philistines.


Yeah. I went there. Suffer.
 
Willsonman said:
I knew this and told so many others they were wrong. I guess its an "I told ya so" kinda day for me. I get lucky every once in awhile.
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Creator is wrong. If I make up a word and spell it Frishpineshik and say it's pronounced Potato, it doesn't mean I'm right and everyone else is wrong :p
 
Chas said:
Simply because one of the parent words in an acronym uses a different variant of the syllable doesn't mean the resulting acronym MUST.
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If GIF were an acronym for Gypsy Interchange Format, I'd be more than happy to say 'jif'. But it isn't.
 
Heh, official or not, everyone will always have their take on it; especially when it's inconsequential.

I always referred to it as ghif.

ASUS as "Eh-sus"
Abit as "Ah-bit"

And the list goes on. The only one that I changed because it made sense to was cache. I used to call cache "ka-chey" for whaever reason. But maybe that was the french courses back in school talking.
 
This is like when I make fun of my vietnamese friends. if they don't like being called nuh-guy-en they shouldn't have spelled their name nguyen and spelled it "noowen".
 
Term-X said:
Heh, official or not, everyone will always have their take on it; especially when it's inconsequential.

I always referred to it as ghif.

ASUS as "Eh-sus"
Abit as "Ah-bit"

And the list goes on. The only one that I changed because it made sense to was cache. I used to call cache "ka-chey" for whaever reason. But maybe that was the french courses back in school talking.
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Ironically, they picked the name "Asus" from "Pegasus" and dropped the Peg part so they would show up higher in directories. So theoretically i think it should sound like the end of the word Pegasus but that is not how I hear company reps saying it.
 
Seventyfive said:
This is like when I make fun of my vietnamese friends. if they don't like being called nuh-guy-en they shouldn't have spelled their name nguyen and spelled it "noowen".
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Shouldn't it be nn-guy-en?
 
kcmastrpc said:
So he named it based on an acronym, and then changed the pronunciation even though it's parent is a hard G.

Moron.
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So I guess everyone pronounces NASA wrong too since aeronautics doesn't use an "a" sound and administration doesn't use an "uh" sound, how about RICO(I've been reading about the Prenda saga). The letters in acronyms often sound different than they do in the word they're taken from.

I have to say I'm surprised that this is still a "controversy", I haven't heard anyone say gif with a hard g in the last ten years or so and none of the professors in my design classes ever pronounced it with a hard g.
 
I have always pronounced it with a hard G and will always pronounce it with a hard G after all it is Graphics Interchange Format.
As previously mentioned I think it is not a cleaning agent Jif :D
 
So....how would you pronounce "GNOME"?

Opening another can of worms, I know =)
 
Well... all i can say on the matter is i've always been a "GIF" person. Simply because thats how it looked and thats how i said it in my head. Because lets face it... anyone that is anyone knows that we only ever READ these things... you never hear people say them! So its his fault for not setting the record straight from the get go. If you've got a shyte name or one that is just plane difficult to pronounce and/or spell... then make it clear when you first introduce yourself. That is just polite! Still gonna say GIF coz it sounds less gay! HA! Take that Sir! :p
 
GYoGp1D.gif
 
Chas said:
It's apparent that people forgot that English is a language with an absolute ASSLOAD of exceptions in it.

Simply because one of the parent words in an acronym uses a different variant of the syllable doesn't mean the resulting acronym MUST.

Here's a few more words that start with soft G.

gentle
giant
gerbil
gestation
gel
ginger
generation
genial
gym
geology
gem
genius
genuine
germ
gerainium
general
giant
giraffe
gentry
geneolo
geography
geriatrics
gene
general
German
giraffe
gypsy

Learn to English philistines.


Yeah. I went there. Suffer.
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At Christmas do you get "gifts" or "jifts"?

Anyway its an acronym for "Graphics Interchange Format". The G in Graphics is a hard G, so enunciation in the acronym should also be a hard G.
 
I'm joing to keep calling it GIF(t).

Because no one can stop me.
 
I think in solidarity with all the Dyslexic people in the world we should just pronounce it FIG ... much simpler :D
 
I don't jive a fuck what he says, Gif sounds better than jif.

People in the US call routers, "rowters" and people in the UK call them "rooters" (which sounds terrible, but still), but they are both correct. Yet the person who made the first one doesn't get all pissy.
 
giraffe. pronounce that with a hard G

gif with hard G sounds too much like gimp.
 
People who say GIF with a hard G probably also say JFEG instead of JPEG. After all, the P in JPEG stands for Photographic.

/sarcasm
 
He probably started pronouncing the acronym based on it's component letters rather than the words it was derived from.

JEE -EYE - EFF

JEEEYEEFF

JEEYEF

JYF



Ultimately, who the fuck cares? I just hope the time when people see a .gif file and think "What the fuck is this?" hurries up and gets here.
 
Don't care..If you wanted it pronounced jif you should of come up with a different name.
 
Dammit. I just started getting comfortable pronouncing it Gif (with a hard G).
 
My college software engineering professor told us he worked on the standards commitee that created .gif and told us that it was meant to be pronounced "jif" as well.
 
I'm happy to re-learn I've always pronounced it correctly and everyone else around me didn't... I would argue with them about this too, and they would get angry with me... but the creator has stated this all the time, it's like a yearly thing... hey we should make it into a holiday :p
 
I've always called it GIF and will continue to do so.

This did make me wonder though if in Spanish, JIF is pronounced as HIF ?
 
Since I often refer to the image files by their actual acronyms ... Bee Em Pea, Jay Pea Gee, and Gee Eye Ef ... I can be correct and still ignore the creator's preference :)
 
I think this whole thing is funny and stupid. The guy that creates a name for a file format says it's pronounced a certain way and people that have been saying it wrong feel stupid so they tell him to F off and keep saying it wrong.

The real funny part is I read an article almost exactly like this one over 20 years ago. I've always pronounced it JIF, since 1988, way before reading the article.

The people that pronounce it GIF are probably the same people that say NIC Card... sigh.
 
I'm going to keep using the hard G sound because IT'S A FUCKING ACRONYM, seriously, it's not a "word" so there is no "correct" pronunciation of it.
 
canon.tk said:
The people that pronounce it GIF are probably the same people that say NIC Card... sigh.
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People still saying HIV virus too... time to let things go rather than being so pedantic about pronunciation of acronyms and the what not. Sometimes the dictionary people just get it right by allowing two separate pronunciations and they get to call it as so, I mean you don't really say jiggabyte do you ?
 
sfsuphysics said:
People still saying HIV virus too... time to let things go rather than being so pedantic about pronunciation of acronyms and the what not. Sometimes the dictionary people just get it right by allowing two separate pronunciations and they get to call it as so, I mean you don't really say jiggabyte do you ?
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Really? So the hard G is only used in technology terms? Wasn't aware, thanks for the heads up.
 
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