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this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2025
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The only argument is that the guy who invented and named the GIF originally pronounced it that way, but he was a computer scientist, not a linguist. Thankfully the inevitable and uncontrollable evolution of language corrected that mistake fairly quickly.
Nope that is far from the only argument.
It is how the word was originally said and intended to be used. Evidence: the literal first advertisement for the format: "choosy developers choose GIF", a pun on the advertisement for JIF peanut butter.
the pronunciation of g before a vowel is not always hard. Giraffe. Gin.
the pronunciation of the individual words in an acronym don't define its pronunciation. NASA - Aeronautic, Association - do you pronounce it NÆSÂ? ASAP - do you say ÂSÂP or AySAP?
It's fine to say it however you want, but to act like one way is definitively correct, for the reasons you cite anyway, is bad
I didn't cite any reasons and I didn't say that there is a correct and incorrect way to pronounce it now, just that the way they chose to pronounce it originally was arbitrary and unintuitive. Add a "t" to the end, what does that spell? The pronunciations of giraffe and gin are equally unintuitive to modern American English speakers, they're just old words that have been well-established in the lexicon so no one thinks about that. If someone came up with the word gin today, we'd probably be having the same argument about it.
And when I said it's the only argument, I meant it's the only one that holds any water. It's still leaking all over the place.
They’re not unintuitive. Just because you think that doesn’t make it true. Tom Scott has a whole video on the topic, essentially however you first associate that word is how you think it should be pronounced. That doesn’t make it unintuitive, as would be evidenced by the pretty much 50/50 split of usage for soft g vs hard g for years. I had huge arguments about this back in like 2016/7 and it literally was a 50/50 split. Might have changed since then, but that doesn’t mean jack shit about intuitiveness.
Both pronunciations already had solid handholds in the zeitgeist by 2016, it was named 30 years before that. I'd argue the 50/50 split you provide nothing but hearsay for is proof that the hard g pronunciation is more intuitive as it was originally marketed and advertised with the soft g (and a pronunciation guide for the slogan as folks have helpfully pointed out). By your and Tom Scott's reasoning, everyone exposed to it then would use the soft g, but people in the decades after who knew nothing of the cheap marketing stunt would inevitably pronounce it however made the most sense to them. Thus the hard g pronunciation.
Now for my own personal hearsay, it's never been anywhere close to 50/50 and it's gotten more and more unbalanced towards the hard g over time. In 2011 it was maybe 70/30 hard g/soft g, now it feels like 95/5 🤷♂️. But again, that's all obviously irrelevant due to it's subjectivity.
No by Tom Scott’s explanation (not reasoning, he was stating actual science and scientific studies) exactly what has happened would have happened. People hear the word with a hard g and they forever associate it that way, even if it isn’t correct. It has nothing to do with how people think it should be pronounced or even the way that makes most sense to them. It’s about former associations with other words grabbing your mind at that moment and clicking. Doesn’t matter if you look back at it later and think (oh soft g makes sense cause it’s the peanut butter). You’ll already have the hard g stuck.
It’s an acronym. There’s no linguistic requirement for any of the letters to match any part of the pronunciation. NASA, scuba, I can list a hundred acronyms that have absolutely no connection to their expanded pronunciation.
And no, it wasn’t just the dude who invented it. It was the entire company, CompuServe, because they were trying to sell a product. “Choosy developers choose gif”. It’s literally got a tagline that tells you how it’s pronounced.
I made no statements to the contrary, not sure why you directed any of that first paragraph at me and not the person I responded to. Regardless, the only "correct" pronunciations of any words are the ones that find purchase in the cultural lexicon. The fact that the soft g pronunciation was chosen by a corporation trying to cash in on the success of a different corporation is even less convincing of an argument. Fuck those soulless money-grubbers, they can take their advertising slogan-based neoligisms and shove them in their arse, but pronounced like "ass" because language evolves. You have to evolve with it or you won't understand it.
I mean, the pronunciation of proper nouns doesn’t follow other rules of language. If the creator is still alive and is telling you the correct pronunciation then that’s the pronunciation. It’s a product, a proper noun, not a simple word.
It's not a proper noun any more than granola is. Even if that point stood, when you get down to it, there simply are no "rules of language," there is just making noises that other people understand or making ones that they don't. You think proper nouns can't have multiple pronunciations, well what do you call those little yellow, orange, and brown peanut butter candies? How do you say the capital of South Dakota? Speaking of SD, did you know there's a town there called Sinai, pronounced "sigh-knee-eye" by its residents? I legitimately know a guy named Jurgen, one of his parents pronounces it with the J sound and the other pronounces it with the Y sound! It may be infuriating at times but that's just how spoken language works. I urge you to embrace it as fighting it is fruitless. It's also easier to get used to cringey new slang when you realize it's a universal constant.
You're absolutely correct, regardless of who defined the sound, it's how it's generally pronounced in public that becomes the status quo and therefore "correct" way.
I've never heard anyone in real life use the soft G. Doesn't mean people don't, but regionally it's "JIF" for me.
The funny thing is, regardless of how it's said people who know anything about computers understand what you're talking about, so the argument is really a useless one. Maybe if .jif was used more then it would matter, but I can't say I've seen a .jif file in the wild myself.
Right? If the creator of jpeg came and said "It's actually pronounced 'Jay-pej'," people would just laugh at them.