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Unlike all the other questions which are subjective or philosophical, it’s gif with a J for f*s sake. It’s what we called it in the 80s, it’s what the creator c
by newobj 5y ago
Unlike all the other questions which are subjective or philosophical, it’s gif with a J for f*s sake. It’s what we called it in the 80s, it’s what the creator called it, it’s Jif goddamnit.
- strombofulous 5y agoIt's true that the creator pronounces it with a J, but take a look at the slide he used to announce his thoughts on the matter https://www.chicagonow.com/lists-that-actually-matter/files/2013/05/BK1FZkMCMAAItrF.jpg-large.jpeg https://www.chicagonow.com/lists-that-actually-matter/files/... (what letters are used to describe how the word "gif" should not be pronounced?)
- throwaway38917 5y agoGDPR countries: https://archive.fo/ng3KR https://archive.fo/ng3KR
- Minor49er 5y agoAre you aware that GNU rhymes with "canoe" and is not pronounced like the animal gnu?
- jamesgreenleaf 5y agoThere's another one that could be added to the OP's site. The internet decided to call it Linux and not GNU/Linux.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> (what letters are used to describe how the word "gif" should not be pronounced?) You could pretty easily update the sign to say "it's pronounced gif, not ghif".
- spicyusername 5y agoNothing is static, life is a moving river. Doesn't matter what it was, "G"if is what it is. Who knows what it will be.
- antiterra 5y agoPlenty of people in the BBS days didn’t say it that way and creators aren’t guaranteed control over the way their work is interpreted. Plus, pronunciations change. I assume you don’t go around demanding people pronounce knife ‘kunifuh,’ right?
- kyruzic 5y agoYou realize you are actually arguing in favour of calling it like jiffy right? Because a direct reading of knife makes it kunifuh, and a direct reading of gif makes it the incorrect pronounciation as well.
- praihan 5y agoTheir argument is that word pronunciations can mutate over time. Knife used to be pronounced k'nife. This slowly faded over time and is now completely eliminated. By analog, jif being the original pronunciation is not important because the majority of people have decided to go with a hard G. In other words, the "correct" spelling or pronunciation of words is democratic.
- kyruzic 5y agoPeople for some reason think that they get to decide how to pronounce a name rather than the creator of the name. Oh well. Its an easy way to determine someone's level of internet knowledge.
- mattnewton 5y agoThat is how words work, they evolve as the consensus pronunciation evolves, they do not stay forever static. This gives us an easy solution to make everyone happy though! We gust have to change "graphics" to be pronounced as "jraphics"
- kyruzic 5y agoIts a name not a regular word.
- mattnewton 5y agoIt's an acronym really, where the first word of the acronym is "graphics" :)
- bener 5y agoThe pronunciation of names also changes over time, and across locations.
- HKH2 5y agoYour argument is descriptivist, whereas theirs is prescriptivist.
- throwaway2331 5y agoDo you also pronounce gun as jun? How about girl as jirl? Giraffe as jiraffe? Frankly, I reserve my right to not care and have fun with language -- instead of being a curmudgeon (there's no point except to feel better about oneself).
- rat9988 5y agoThe author has been clear it shouls be pronounced as J. > Giraffe as jiraffe? ??
- rcdemski 5y agoI prefer to pronounce it Jithub
- throwaway2331 5y agoYou're a real gerk.
- SAI_Peregrinus 5y agoYavascript. Heera.
- croisillon 5y agoI believe Giraffe is pronounced Jiraffe?
- dalmo3 5y agoI think that's the point GP was making i.e. it's not an absolute.
- mattnewton 5y ago
- tempodox 5y agoWhile your questions are logical, they assume consistency. However, English pronunciation is inconsistent as hell. Not that I disagree with you.
- INTPenis 5y agoThis is just like the scsi debate a geographical issue. Internet is world wide so you will have people from all over the world pronouncing things their own way. And that way is the only right way, the hard g.
- dahart 5y agoCorrect. Jraphics Interchange Format. :P. My friends and I called it Gif-with-a-hard-G all through the (late) 80s (edit: more like the 90s, but anyway) and unlike now, nobody corrected us then. I never heard the format’s creator pronounce it though.
- BugsJustFindMe 5y ago> Correct. Jraphics Interchange Format. You do you, but Graphics having a hard G doesn't force GIF to any more than the Amplification in LASER forces the pronunciation of its A, or Stimulated its S, or Emission its E. Or do you and your friends also say "lasseer" instead of "layzur"? This is an arbitrary choice you've made in one case but not the other.
- thaumasiotes 5y agoTo be totally fair, note that the E in laser is in fact pronounced identically (/ə/) to the E in emission.
- ghusbands 5y agoMight depend on where you live, but where I am the "er" in "laser" is like anything the "-er" for almost all words with that ending, but the "e" in "emission" is like the "i" in "igloo" (or like the second "i" in "emission").
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ChrisClark 5y agoAnd JPEG should be JuhFegg.
- BugsJustFindMe 5y agoMaybe go further and say JoiFegg.
- 5y ago
- sweezyjeezy 5y agoShould we also pronounce the K in knight the way we used to? English and its pronunciation are democratic, it's about the way it's used by people - it doesn't matter what it was originally or what the inventor thinks. Trying to fight it just ignores the way English has always changed over time. Gif pronounced with a G or a J are both valid - because that's the way people say it.
- stavros 5y agoTrying to fight it is entirely democratic. You shouldn't have a problem with it. That would be like asking candidates not to campaign.
- sweezyjeezy 5y agoYou can fight for a pronunciation you prefer, but trying to argue that yours is a 'right' or 'objective' answer - that I think is misguided.
- spurtrenolds 5y ago> Should we also pronounce the K in knight the way we used to? The K in knight appears to have turned up in the American pronunciation of "schedule".
- Kiro 5y agoWith 82% saying gif it's the least subjective one in the list.
- tragictrash 5y agoActually, the chicken and the egg one is the least subjective on the list. There is only one correct answer. The egg came first. Its called evolution. At some point, a chicken like creature laid an egg, and the egg hatched into what we know as a chicken. A chicken like creature didn't transform into a chicken while it was alive.
- SamBam 5y agoHmmm, that was my reasoning as well, but now that I think about it... does the egg belong to the creature that laid it or the creature that hatches out of it? A chicken egg is not synonymous with an egg cell, or ovum. The fertilized ovum of course belongs to the creature it will grow into -- it is the creature it will grow into -- and so certainly the chicken ovum came before -- or at the same time as -- the chicken. But when we say "egg" we are referring to the vessel with a shell that houses the fertilized ovum until it hatches. [1] This vessel is made of of various proteins and nutrients, produced by the mother that laid the egg, and a calcium carbonate shell, also made entirely by the mother. This egg, created entirely by the mother and not by the union of an ovum and sperm cell and any mutations that happened then, belongs entirely to the mother. If Proto-chicken mother has laid clutch after clutch of eggs, all those are proto-chicken eggs. When one of those clutches happens to have a mutant that we arbitrarily declare is a "chicken," the egg itself has not changed in any way, only the DNA of the organism housed in the egg. So, on thinking about it, I want to go back and change my answer. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg
- bagacrap 5y agoseems simple to me. Eggs existed millions of years before chickens did.
- deleted 5y ago
- jrochkind1 5y agoExactly, because it's an acronym for Giraffe-ics Interchange Format.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- memetomancer 5y agoAs you can see by the results of the survey, you are indeed in the minority here. It is a hard-G. Anachronisms and appeals to authority (the originator's preference) bear little weight here - a word is added to a language on consensus, and most of us prefer that hard-G. Furthermore, since the G represents the hard-G word 'Graphic' it only makes sense. Subjectively, I feel that the soft-G is milquetoast mild to the degree that it's unpleasant to say or hear. Insipid like a cold bland porridge. Hard-G has all the zest, all the pizazz!
- XorNot 5y agoThere's also a cleaning product named "Jif" in Australia. Saying "Gif" as "jif" seems very redundant - why even have different letters? Though it does seem to be an American thing - we pronounce the H in pretty much all words too, whereas Americans tend to make a lot of "H" sounds silent.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> There's also a cleaning product named "Jif" in Australia And a peanut butter in the US. So what? > Saying "Gif" as "jif" seems very redundant - why even have different letters? English is...rather unconcerned with having an absence of duplication of sounds between letters (“c” and “x” are pretty much completely redundant with other letters, and there are plenty of overlaps on the other letters in represented sounds.)
- dragonwriter 5y ago> a word is added to a language on consensus, and most of us prefer that hard-G. To the extent this is true, it's only in a sense where consensus is much more than mere majority preference and it's absence, and thus the absence of a single correct pronunciation, is also possible and, in fact, common; for GIF, there is an absence of consensus on pronunciation, and thus a diversity of pronunciations with shifting popularity. Your preference may be the eventual consensus, but English can maintain words with multiple pronunciations with shifting popularity over a very long term without settling to general consensus, so maybe not.
- jhgb 5y agoBut if you don't live in an English-speaking country, then "what the creator called it" doesn't even matter. So for the vast majority of people this argument is irrelevant; you generally don't code-switch into English pronunciation for a loanword from another language, especially for an acronym.
- GrumpyNl 5y agoNot when you are from Holland where we pronounce the g as is.