4 ms·

Do you pronounce "gift" with a soft 'g'?

• _emacsomancer_ 7y ago
  No, but "gift" is a borrowing from Old Norse. "GIF", as far as I know, is not an Old Norse lexical item.
  • ScottBurson 7y ago
    It's still a very common English word that's spelled very similarly. One can hardly be surprised if people guessing at the pronunciation of "GIF" select a hard 'g'.
    • _emacsomancer_ 7y ago
      Sure. So English has some words which start with "gi-" which have hard 'g's ('gift', 'give', 'girl', 'giggle') and some which have soft 'g's ('giant', 'giraffe', 'gibber', 'ginger'), so both pronunciations are actually reasonable in English for the orthographic form 'GIF'.
      • ScottBurson 7y ago
        I'm glad we agree.