Jod made the Jiraffes and the Giraffes and they were best friends. But then one Jiraffe found God and he spited Jod and all the Giraffes with all his might.
I'll just post my comment from when I ran across this on lemmy before
I’ll tell the agile fragile fugitive gin-drinking giraffes eating ginger ginseng to imagine gingerly using their digits to engineer a geological survey of the gist of your comment. They ate too much gingerbread and now have gingivitis, so the margins of those attracted to religion aren’t as rigid as the original origins of those of that region and we have to remain vigilant lest magic supersede logic, which of course would be terrible for legislation of the legions.
Nice gimmick. Counterpoint: this GIF of some giggly git giving a gilt gizzard and a large haggis to a giddy girl named Gidget. (GIF omitted because I made it tf up). Incidentally, not a single one of your examples included “gi” followed by “f”.
Incidentally, I pronounce it “jif”, I just think appealing to English as if it had actual rules is insane.
Given that there’s also a .jif format, the J pronunciation makes even less sense.
.gif came first and no one uses .jif anymore because there are better options.
.jif was named to follow .gif.
Its also .jfif to be accurate, and no one really used .jif or .jfif.
The "G" stands for "Graphics". Why would anybody pronounce it "jif"?
The P in JPEG stands for photographic so I guess we shall pronounce it "jayfeg" based on that logic.
/s
Descriptive linguistic opinion: both the hard and soft G pronunciations are used, with the hard G being more common, but I like the soft G and use it myself.
id vibe with jayfeg if it meant everyone pronounces gif correctly
Steve Wilhite (engineering lead on the team that created GIF) said the soft g is the right pronunciation.
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.
Because at the origin of the format, "choosy graphic designers choose .GIF". Which is a direct reference to JIF, the brand of peanut butter, and their tagline.
The pronunciation of an acronym often has little to nothing to do with the words themselves they represent, and more to do with the acronym itself as though it were a word.
So they decided how it should be pronounced based on a cheap marketing ploy, even less reason to care how the creators said it.
You know I daresay that basically your exact comment is what OOP was responding too on reddit.
The "G" stands for "Graphics". Why would anybody pronounce it "jif"?
Well some of us are refined enough to pronounce it like “giraffe-ics.”
(But also because it was a joke by the format’s creators. “Choosy developers choose GIF.” Like the “choosy moms” Jif peanut butter commercials.)
Because the words inside an acronym have no bearing on how the acronym is pronounced. And in this case, it’s not just as acronym. It’s a product name, where the creators get to choose to name it whatever the fuck they want. “Choosy developers choose gif”. So there’s plenty of reasons it should be using a soft g and zero reasons it should be using a hard g.
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.
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.
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
Ask the person who created the format, who pronounced it that way themselves
The U in scuba stands for underwater yet people pronounce it scOOba
The E in hepa stands for efficiency yet its pronounced HEPA with a short E
The A in nato stands for Atlantic and the O stands for organization
The first A in ASAP is for as
The Os in POTUS, SCOTUS and FLOTUS all come from of and the Us comes from United
Acronyms don’t need to sound like the word they are from
Finally, a religious argument that makes sense.
I always felt like this was a weird argument. Language is always in flux. It's why the definition of "literally" now includes a definition that it's a synonym of "figuratively" since people used it that was so much.
If enough people think gif should be pronounced like "god", then it should. If the "jif" pronunciation has enough people who use it, then that's valid, too. Hell, if a bunch of people started legitimately saying it should be a homonym with the word "plankton," even that'd be valid.
Words are about conveying meaning; the same meaning is intended with both pronunciations, and understood by the people hearing it. There's nothing to argue about.
the "literally means figuratively now" argument is stupid, saying it in non literal scenarios is used as hyperbole. You would never say "I'm figuratively dying of thirst"
I have literally said "I'm figuratively dying of thirst" but im also a massive smart ass.
Gif is a proper noun and a computer product. It’s not a simple word like “arse”. This would be like people saying Nike should be pronounced “Nick” and the company “Nike” is yelling “no it’s Nike! Like the god!” And people are just like, “nah I don’t care what you want your company to be called, I’m calling it something else.”
If enough people pronounce it differently, then it's a valid way to pronounce it.
It doesn't matter if it's a proper noun, the word is still meant to convey meaning and as long as it effectively does that for the population in general, it's valid.
okay Jraphics Interchange Format
It's an acronym, people! Say it right:
"Gee" "Eye" "Eff"
...or impress us all with your knowledge: Graphics Interchange Format.
Make CompuServe proud.
pronunciation of the words that make up an acronym have nothing to do with how you pronounce an acronym. see: atm is ay tee emm not aw tel mah nor is it atom. it's just however it would make sense as a standalone word. some make a single sound and some require letter by letter and some combine.
soft 'g' jif makes perfect sense and is what the creator said is the the way it's pronounced. hard 'g' gif sounds like someone saying 'gift' got candlejacked, thank you for coming to my ted tal
NASA, not NAySA, SCUBA, not SCUBbA, LASER, not LASsER. Many such cases.
ATM is not an acronym, though, just an initialism, so the letters are pronounced individually.
Jraphical
Into heaven you mean, because you passed the test.
gif pronunciation rights are human rights
I start pronouncing it yiff whenever someone complains. Eventually they beg me to say it how I want to say it.
jif is peanut butter not meme
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