There's no meaningful argument on how to pronounce "gif" except "how do people pronounce gif?". Otherwise we're all going to comb through historical records to

There's no meaningful argument on how to pronounce "gif" except "how do people pronounce gif?". Otherwise we're all going to comb through historical records to find out who first said "gift" or "giraffe". But we can all have preferences, and in some small way be part of the process of pushing English in one direction or another. So here's my pitch for the hard g: Ambiguous letters are very annoying. I'm teaching my kids to read and it's very frustrating. C is sometimes like sometimes like k (except when k is followed by n) and sometimes like s (except when s is followed by h), unless c is followed by h in which case...you get the idea. We have more sounds than letters, so some ambiguity is required by a sort of pigeonhole principle. It's weird, then, that we have multiple letters for the same sound. A misuse of resources. But at least C the rules are relatively clean. G is the worst of them, because you really can't tell. Gimble but giant, etc. So we ought to try to minimize the degree to which this happens because it makes English more approachable for everyone. If you coin a word starting with a "k" sound, start it with a k. And if you want something to start with "j" use a j. (If you want a hard g, you have to use a g, so that's settled already). Then, on the margins, English is slightly more consistent. With words where there's no consensus, you probably can't change the spelling (and with gif you surely can't) but the same logic applies: pick in the direction of less ambiguity. Since we already have a "j" sound, we should, where possible, make "g" hard. So say gif with a hard g for humanity.