How do you pronounce "Gif"?

[Borachio]

Look. It's staring you right in the face.

Pronounce it "Gif".

I nearly always do, myself. Even when there's no one else in the room.

(Honestly, this should all go without saying.)

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Vid, yes that means video...a series of images, hence animation. GIF is one of a multitude of formats for image files, hence a vid may be stored in GIF. Or it may not. When discussing the content of a vid, no one really cares about the file format.

Did that catch you up?

Note that in this conversation, which was typed, not spoken, GIF did get used as a word. But again, this is not a conversation I would ever foresee coming up in real life. Going all pedantic about file formats isn't something my real life friends tend to draw out.

Something posted from YouTube is a video. The smiley is not a video from YouTube (or other similar sites), nor is it a movie or TV show, etc. It's a smiley.

 

[Akka]

I pronounce the g in gif the same way I do the g in jpg.

Which is to say, with Tim, that I'm not sure I've ever actually spoken the word at all.

It's actually terms I often use and hear used (though gif much less these day, replaced by png), due to computers being both my work and a center of interest in many of my friend circles.

(But I would pronounce it with a hard g if I were to.)

So, bigger question: how do you pronounce jpg?

No, what I mean is how does one pronounce jpg?

I see no reason to use a hard g in "gif", so I've always pronounced it "jif".
As for jpg, I've always heard it (and pronounced it) "j-peg".

 

[gay_Aleks]

Unorthodox, I know, but it always works.

 

[Akka]

Ugh... okay I'll bite. Why is this incorrect? Given that it's an initial for a word that begins with a hard G, in what was is pronouncing the acronym with a soft G "correct"? The only answer I can think of is something along the lines of "the guy who invented it says so", which personally I wouldn't find that compelling.

I guess it would be incorrect because "g" is usually pronounced "j" when used before a "i" or a "e" ?
Though admitedly, it might not be a rule in english.

 

[warpus]

English has no rules, it does whatever it wants.

 

[BvBPL]

Ugh... okay I'll bite. Why is this incorrect? Given that it's an initial for a word that begins with a hard G, in what was is pronouncing the acronym with a soft G "correct"? The only answer I can think of is something along the lines of "the guy who invented it says so", which personally I wouldn't find that compelling.

Acronyms are based on the word they form not the words used to form them. If it were the latter than laser would be pronounced differently.

 

[Arakhor]

I guess it would be incorrect because "g" is usually pronounced "j" when used before a "i" or a "e" ? Though admitedly, it might not be a rule in english.

G is usually soft before E, but never before I.

 

[civvver]

English has no rules, it does whatever it wants.

I always misspell veil cus of that stupid bleeping rule they teach you in grade school i before e, exception before c exception there's a million words that don't follow this convention! Like viel, I mean veil!

 

[Timsup2nothin]

G is usually soft before E, but never before I.

Tell that to my pet giraffe. He will tell you this:

English has no rules, it does whatever it wants.

 

[Arakhor]

<double-post>

 

[Arakhor]

I always misspell veil cus of that stupid bleeping rule they teach you in grade school i before e, exception before c exception there's a million words that don't follow this convention! Like viel, I mean veil!

So either forget that silly rule or amend it to: "I before E, except after C or when it sounds like EEE."

Tell that to my pet giraffe. He will tell you this:

Well, I knew that someone would come up with an exception even as I wrote that post, but just like the name Giles, giraffe comes from French and therefore doesn't count.

 

[gay_Aleks]

I prefer my zhiraff, thank you very much.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Also, we guess how to pronounce unfamiliar words by analogy with words we do know. Gif looks closest to gift, of words with which we are familiar.

 

[cardgame]

If we're going to argue English grammatical conventions, heed this:

http://howtoreallypronouncegif.com/

 

[Akka]

G is usually soft before E, but never before I.

Giraffe ? Gin ? Agility ? Effigy ? Gym ? Origin ? Aging ? Averaging ? Giant ? Gibberish ? Gibbet ?
(admitedly some of them are "y", but that's kinda related)

 

[Commodore]

If we're going to argue English grammatical conventions, heed this:

http://howtoreallypronouncegif.com/

I love that link because it absolutely destroys the argument that it should be pronounced 'jif' just because the coiner of the word says so. The way I see it, the guy may have coined the word, but he is not the creator of the English language, and therefore has no right to contradict grammatical or pronunciation conventions within the language. And current conventions within the language say it should be pronounced 'gif'.

I especially love this line:

A coiner effectively loses control of a word once it’s out there

I fully agree with this. No one person should ever have any kind of control over the language, even if it's just for one word. How words are pronounced and how the language as a whole works, should be determined solely by popular usage.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Acronyms are based on the word they form not the words used to form them. If it were the latter than laser would be pronounced differently.

You're missing my point I feel. I only mentioned the word the acronym is based on because, if it had been "giraffe" for example, then that might possibly be a reason why someone might claim the acronym should be "correctly" pronounced that way. And I was trying to think of reasons that would make the soft g "correct".

 

[Arakhor]

Giraffe ? Gin ? Agility ? Effigy ? Gym ? Origin ? Aging ? Averaging ? Giant ? Gibberish ? Gibbet ?
(admitedly some of them are "y", but that's kinda related)

Well, giraffe, agility, giant, gibbet and origin are originally French, gin and gibberish come from Dutch and ageing is spelt with an E

Average is also from the French, but we say all such -age words with a soft G, especially as G is usually soft before E. G is always hard in Latin and Greek, I believe, so gymnasion wouldn't fit with the French-influenced softening of the G.

The above of course is the problem with English - we have so many foreign words compared to our Germanic roots, pronunciation can be very difficult!

 

[Mise]

Agincourt?

Anyway, it's gif, not jif. I honestly don't give a crap what the guy who made the format says. He doesn't get to decide how I pronounce things.