Memes

• Geography
• Geology
• Giraffe
• Generous

Just a few examples that come to mind. Additionally, the pronunciation of the individual words included in an acronym DOES NOT determine the pronunciation of that acronym. See SCUBA as an example.

Obviously it's pronounced the same as the the "g" in "gigantic"

I would never correct how someone pronounces gif, but...

• Gin is a tasty drink.
• Gerunds are verbal nouns.
• Gentrification is a trend in urban environments.
• Gifs are poorly optimized internet clips with controversy surrounding their pronunciation.

It is gif

I used to be adament about gif with a hard G until I had a coworker insist that sudo was pronounced soodoo rather than pseudo. like yeah, I know it stands for sUpEr uSeR dO but you can never get me to not say it the other way.

Gerry the gentle giraffe went to the gym with the generous gem of a gymnast Geoffrey (the giant ginger who wears gentlemen’s hair gel and studies geometry). Genius!

The creator of the format, Steve Wihite, says it’s pronounced as JIF, but personally I still say GIF out of habit.

https://www.cnn.com/2013/05/22/tech/web/pronounce-gif/index.html

I’ve had similar arguments with people over the pronunciation of Linux, with one person saying it’s “Lie-nicks” because it’s named after “Linus”, but Linus himself has said he pronounces his own name differently depending on the language he’s speaking at the time, but Linux is always pronounced “Lynn-icks.”

https://youtu.be/5IfHm6R5le0?si=9bQHnIiB0UxBYS2o

Well, you see, the g in gif stands for "graphics" which is ultimately from Greek "γραφικός," and because this is the 21st century, γ in front of a close front vowel is pronounced as neither /g/ nor /d͡ʒ/ but rather /ʝ/, which is pronounced a bit like English's y, so in its purest rendition gif is really pronounced "yiff", which doubles as homage to the online communities that OP frequents.

It's pronounced however the fuck you want to pronounce it.

I like to pronounce it "jif" because gin, gentle, Germany, gypsy. Others like to pronounce it "gif" because gift, good, game, girl.

Don't pull any bullshit reasons like "it's not pronounced jraphics", because if that argument holds any water, JPEG is jay-feg, scuba is scuh-ba, and laser is lah-seer.

The creator calls it "jif" and wants others to call it "jif". I don't give a shit; if some people want to call it "gif", that's up to them and I'm not stopping them. English is not a prescriptive language; pronunciations will always differ according to origins and regions and accents and generations. I will not misunderstand you if you pronounce it "gif", and you will not misunderstand me if I say "jif".

Some arguments that people keep bringing up that are all wrong and carry zero weight in this discussion:

• The creator says it's JIF
• It's like Gift, but without the T
• It's like Giraffe, but without the raffe
• It stands for "Graphics Interchange Format" so it's GIF
• My dictionary says it's GIF
• My dictionary says it's JIF
• Obama says it's GIF
• Giphy says it's GIF

Ultimately, language is very dynamic and changes all the time. Words change their spelling, their meaning and their pronunciation too. Dictionaries tend to lag behind a little bit, but the fact that they publish a new version every year signifies how much languages change. The creator of a word can coin a pronunciation, but ultimately has zero control over whether it will be adopted or not.

So therefore whichever way most people actually pronounce it is by definition the correct pronunciation. And the polls done on this subject are pretty clear, showing that GIF is the preferred pronunciation, chosen by up to 70% in North America and over 80% in Australia and the UK. This depends on which poll you use, but in general the split is at least 2:1 in favour of GIF, and over time the usage of GIF tends to trend up over time.

So ultimately, the one true pronunciation is GIF, as decided by the people as a whole. However, most dictionaries do list JIF as an accepted alternative pronunciation, due to the not insignificant minority pronouncing it that way.

In other words, just choose which pronunciation you prefer, and use that. And try to avoid the pointless debates people like to have on the subject, filled with arguments that don't carry any weight whatsoever.

Who fucking cares

This is actually an issue that should be solved at the English level. All words starting with a 'g' that are pronounced 'j' should be written with a 'j'.

Girl -> Girl
Giraffe -> jiraffe
GIF -> GIF

How do you pronounce gin? How do you pronounce giraffe?

gust jet over it.

The creator of the format says "JIF", so I say it as well.

Gesus Christ

Blame english instead of people probouncing the wrong way. English don't give a fucking clue about pronounciation only using letters.

So I can pronounce Blamei as Lemmy. [B silent, a - e sound, mm and m can be pronounced same, and ei can be read as y]

We speak the language and pronounce new words based on the past words of the language. There are exceptions but they don't negate the defaults.

Nearly every single word in English that starts with a g followed by a soft ih/eh vowel is pronounced as a soft g, just a few:

gin gypsy general gerund Gerald gel gem gyp Geronimo gesture

In fact, there are something like 20,000 words in the dictionary that start with G and the number of them that are pronounced with a hard G where this rule otherwise dictates a soft G is such a small fraction of them that it has its own wiki page.

This video is a tad harsh for comedic effort, but otherwise entirely fact based and sourced:

https://youtu.be/MSJaSS_Zj0Y

Bottom line: you're free to use a hard G, but it's not the default pronunciation based on either all other English words or the creator's intentions, and if you're confused why others pronounce it with a soft G, they would seem to be simply more familiar with the English language 🤷‍♂️