How do you pronounce "Gif"?

[Valka D'Ur]

You know, I would've understood the point of this if "jiff" meant something fundamentally different from "giff", but it doesn't. Usually, when you say either of those, people know what you're talking about.

Mostly because people don't stop arguing about it.

You've just brought another angle to this argument. I don't know how popular the word "jiffy" is nowadays, but it was common throughout most of my life. "In a jiffy" means something will be done quickly, and the word is sometimes shortened to "jiff" (ie. "It'll only take a jiff.").

So between doing something quickly (jiffy/jiff) and peanut butter (Jif), it's a lot less confusing if .gif is pronounced "gif" with a hard "g".

 

[gay_Aleks]

Maybe we could just pronounce it "dot j/giffy" and put an end to this silliness.

 

[warpus]

If someone comes over and says: "I have that jiff ready for you" I assume it's somebody who doesn't know much about computers, which is fine, or someone who has confused me for somebody who enjoys consuming peanutbutter, which is not fine.

 

[gay_Aleks]

I love consuming peanut butter dot jgiffs!

 

[Takhisis]

Soft g before i? I didn't know I got jifts for my birthday.

 

[gay_Aleks]

I have no idea how to pronounce in Bulgarian 75% of the time, I can't be bothered to know how to pronounce stuff in English.

 

[Akka]

I'm not sure the 'jif is jif, so gif is jif' argument follows. 'Pajama' and 'pagoda' are pronounced differently, so I don't see why g has to be soft in 'gif' when it doesn't in 'pagoda'.

You didn't read any of the other messages in the thread, among them all those which listed the numerous words in english which have a soft g when it's in front of a e or i, right ?

Soft g before i? I didn't know I got jifts for my birthday.

Well, usually for a birthday you have a giant party. But your were perhaps a bit too gingerly caught up thinking about your origins to notice ?

 

[Arakhor]

FP says it doesn't have to be. My point (and that of several others) is that it's definitely not the natural way to immediately soften a G before I.

 

[Akka]

Yeah, I got tricked by the fact he used a "a"/"o" example. As some people actually use it and miss the point that you only can have soft "g" in front or e/i/y, I in turn missed the point that "j" in one case doesn't imply "soft g" in the other.

Though I think the "jif is jif so gif is jif" is a reference to said peanut butter thingie which inspired the guys creating the acronym ?

 

[Arakhor]

As for ginger, we adopted it from French, so of course it has the soft G by default. As I've said before, pretty much all our soft-G words are from Romance languages, where it absolutely is the rule.

 

[Takhisis]

Giant-gingerly-origin. Yeap. Latin or Greek, ultimately. Sorry, Akka.

 

[Flying Pig]

Yeah, I got tricked by the fact he used a "a"/"o" example. As some people actually use it and miss the point that you only can have soft "g" in front or e/i/y, I in turn missed the point that "j" in one case doesn't imply "soft g" in the other.

Though I think the "jif is jif so gif is jif" is a reference to said peanut butter thingie which inspired the guys creating the acronym ?

Even then, you might get a Gatling gun as one of those gifts.

EDIT: Well, it would certainly be a change from the clementine, socks and chocolate coins...

 

[Akka]

Giant-gingerly-origin. Yeap. Latin or Greek, ultimately. Sorry, Akka.

As for ginger, we adopted it from French, so of course it has the soft G by default. As I've said before, pretty much all our soft-G words are from Romance languages, where it absolutely is the rule.

As I've already said previously in the thread :

I don't really see how pointing that such word comes from latin/greek/french and not a germanic language, change anything about the fact that the g is often soft before e/i/y and as such "jif" is an acceptable pronounciation. It's not like "gif" had a definite etymology which told it should have a hard G.

The "it comes from language X" was a pointless and void argument same pages before, it still is.

 

[Arakhor]

The "it comes from language X" was a pointless and void argument same pages before, it still is.

Every single argument in this thread is pointless and void. I'd have thought that was obvious by now.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Yet, here we are, page seven of this thread...

 

[Lexicus]

Every single argument in this thread is pointless and void. I'd have thought that was obvious by now.

This debate should have ended when I posted "I don't live in the Kingdom of Jondor."

 

[gay_Aleks]

Should have ended with the PA comic, to be fair. Violence always solves pointless and void arguments.

Provided you're not caught, that is.

 

[Arakhor]

Hell, even the "the author said so" argument is pointless, because he doesn't get to dictate how it gets pronounced once it's out in the wild, so if even the creator's word isn't enough, it's a pointless thread altogether.

Fun fact: Gs are always hard in Latin, Greek and Old Norse, but (presumably) never hard in the Romance languages which descend from Latin. I wonder how that happened.

 

[Lexicus]

Well there are some hard Gs in spanish, eg. guapo and lago, though I don't know about the other romance languages.

EDIT: heh. "hard Gs" made me think of a letter G toting a gun in gangsta clothes.

 

[W|M]

Gs are hard when they're before A, O and U, and they're soft when they're before I and E in Romance languages. In Portuguese, if you need a hard G sound immediately before an I or an E, you add a silent U next to it (e.g. Português)

In the same way, Cs are always hard in Latin, but are soft when they're before Is and Es in Romance languages, and whenever a hard C sound is needed before an I or an E, a QU is used (e.g. Quinto)