Jif or Gif
Tara C
Hey guys,
here's a question for everyone.
Which way do you pronounce "Gif"?
In my opinion, it's pronounced "Jif".
It's a soft "G". A soft "G" is when “G” is followed by: "E, I, Y" so it sounds like “j”. Such as "Gem, Giant, Gym, Gentle".
A hard "G" is followed by any other letter, so words like "Get, Go, Gas, Gum".
The inventor of "GIF"'s, Steve Wilhite, while he was accepting a lifetime achievement award for his creation in 2013, he sai
😛"It's pronounced JIF, not GIF."
If you're confused about what a "GIF" is it's an acronym for Graphics Interchange Format, it's a bitmap image format. In simpler words it's a moving picture.
Such as :
So what's your opinion, how do you pronounce it? Let me know in the comments.
Thanks for reading.
Bíodh lá iontach agat.
Sláinte!
Tara C
Comments
VvvvV
I always pronounced it in my head gif like gift without the t. but since the creator says its not gif i would go with afrikaans word for poison gif which is pronounced guuuhf not ghee if . whch begs the question how do one pronounce jif 😐 jee f or jhif . this is the old nike pronunciation debacle once again. people would argue that it is nike like mike where in fact it is nike like mike and then key nike key.
and the mutant ninja turtle debate where it had a different name in the uk.
tbh looking back we debated to death a lot of inane points
I always said Gif with the hard G but if the guy who created it says otherwise then I will start doing it the other way. He should know.
Hard g. If the bloke who invented it doesn't know better, he needs to learn English. Do you pronounce Graphics as Jraphics?
He is the inventor, he should name and pronounce it as he wants. It isn't the first time something like this happens.
Then he's wrong and should learn the language.
The inventor is american and we yanks will butcher the English language however we see fit. 😆
lol you got me Liam.
why do one say j peg then and not j piug?
The hard-G pronunciation of the letter G usually comes when a, o, or u follows it (think gas, good, or guy). We pronounce G's as the soft-G when i, e, or y follow it (think giraffe, German, or analogy). There are exceptions of course, but in general practice, Wilhite has his point. GIF is followed by an I.
for example gin
Jraphics Park
Oh also what about jiant jiraffes in Jeorgia? O.o
Standard digital naming conventions.
If you pronounce GIF "jif", then you'd have to pronounce GUI "jewie"
Hard G
lol i've always pronounced it jif too xD
Hard G because I'm German and we don't appreciate soft things 😃
soft G but still G
I pronounce it as if it were with h "he" + "fff"
hard G and will continue to do this
Jif
If it were meant to be pronounced gif, they would spell it that way.
Jif. Google a freaking commercial! 😛
It's a weird one. I just presumed for a long time that it was Gif. I always said Gif.
But then I heard that the creator said it's Jif. I have usually called it Jif since then. It should probably be pronounced Gif though. As you said, it means Graphics Interchange Format, so logically you would think it'd be pronounced Gif
Hard G and I go along with what Liam said too. If someone invents something and then later people speak about it/write about it in acronym form then the inventor knows no better than anyone else how to pronounce it.
On the other hand, if an inventor while trademarking their new product, goes as far as to include the pronunciation of the acronym for their invention, well then I guess we should listen to them when they tell us how to pronounce it. Of course I don't know if you can include the pronunciation for an acronym of your product in its trademarking. That sounds like a job for someone else to go and research.
Just throwing this in here. Seeing as a lot of you are bringing up that the G stands for Graphics. G.I.F. is the acornym so you'd say it by each letter, spelling it out like saying USA, you don't pronounce that as one word, us-a or us-ay, you just say U.S.A. For GIF, most people say it as a word, so because of the English language and grammar rules and all that stuff, you're supposed to pronounce G with an I following it, as a J, a soft G
Except for gift as mentioned already by RTK... is that the exception proving the rule? Time to go to my dictionary for pronunciation guide to all words with "gi" in them.
I did a small bit of research, just on words beginning with "gi". Find the "gi" exception in the next two sentences:
That giddy girl over there was given a girdle and a gibbon by that giant of a man Gideon, at the gig last night. I don't know whether I would call him a git or a gimp.
Now I know this might be gilding the lily somewhat, but does anyone feel green around the gills?
I am happy to keep saying GIF rather than JIF. It seems to me that other than "gift" there are plenty of exceptions to the rule already.
I'm voting this comment for the total waste it laid upon a line of reasoning 😃
Гиф 😃
Hard G is more familiar for russian language (as Г), soft variant (Дж) is used only in adopted words.
But some people use soft variant. I think it's less popular in Russia.
I'm not philologist and do not guarantee the accuracy of the above 🙂