4 ms·

Creator of the GIF says it is pronounced “Jif”

• LeoPanthera 10y ago
  22 May 2013
  • Jaruzel 10y ago
    Doesn't make it any less relevant. I'm still arguing with people who are convinced it's 'gif' not 'jif'. I prefer 'jif' as that's how I've always said it, right back to when it was originally invented. However, the pronunciation makes no sense, as it stands for Graphics Interchange Format. the word 'graphics' starts with a soft-g, so why isn't it pronounced 'gif' then?
    • mhd 10y ago
      Just reading it, without knowing the background, it's certainly a possible pronunciation in English, and I guess you have the French to blame for that (cf. Geoffrey). "Mispronouncing" abbreviations and the like is quite common. Once usage sticks around, derivation does hardly matter. Habit trumps logic. Compare "char", C's monosyllabic mutilation of "character". Now everyone who pronounces it like "car" (as in vroom-vroom) go stand in a corner, as according to Dennis Ritchie it's either "char" (as in charcoal) or "care" (as in TCOB). One of the few signs of maturity that I seem to exhibit is being able to control myself these days whenever someone says something obviously badwrong like that (or pluralizing status as "stati" or saying "binary order mark"). I hardly even twitch anymore. When starting at a new company, test your co-workers that way. Say "squoll" for SQL, pronounce char as "shar" (with a French inflection), say 6 for vi and capitalize programming language names.