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How can you call it lack of consensus when it’s 80-20, especially considering it’s an extremely skewed sample (techies are way more likely to pronounce it jif)

by Lewton 5y ago

How can you call it lack of consensus when it’s 80-20, especially considering it’s an extremely skewed sample (techies are way more likely to pronounce it jif) I think it’s pretty obvious that there’s a strong consensus it’s a hard G

Dylan16807 5y ago
> (techies are way more likely to pronounce it jif) Oh? Why do you say that? I mean, I doubt knowing what the creator said has that big of an impact but maybe I'm wrong on that. > I think it’s pretty obvious that there’s a strong consensus it’s a hard G Show me a poll that doesn't tell you the answer in the options. When one of the answers is "gif", and it wins as the pronunciation for "gif", that's a useless result.
- Lewton 5y ago
  > Oh? Why do you say that? I mean, I doubt knowing what the creator said has that big of an impact but maybe I'm wrong on that. Are you gonna argue that there exists a significant number of people that would pronounce it jif with no prompting? That's quite a stretch
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    I was saying it long before hearing anything about the inventor. When you say 'no prompting', you mean just finding it in text with no context? Hell if I know whether people blindly guess it's like "give" or "gin" but neither one seems super obvious over the other unless you treat it like it's derived from the word "gift". If you say it in front of someone and they possibly correct you, I don't know why the techy version would differ from the average person version.
    - Lewton 5y ago
      I meant that the average techie person is much more likely to know what the creator intended for the pronunciation and are therefore more likely to say jif I personally don't know anyone who'd pronounce it with a j sound and I severely doubt anyone in my country would default to a j sound, but I'm open to that being cultural. I just think the fact that hard G wins by such a landslide is pretty good evidence that defaulting to a j sound is incredibly rare
      - ghusbands 5y ago
        Ah, so you aren't saying a majority of techies will use 'jif' (which is I think what many are reading from "techies are way more likely to pronounce it jif"), but just that they are more likely than non-techies to do so, given the prior knowledge. Fair. A 20/80 split in a poll in a world in which lots of people are correcting others towards a hard G indicates that there's plenty of people choosing to pronounce it like "gin" or "gist" or "gelatin" or "genius" or "generous" or "genetic" or "giant" or "gymnast" or "ginger" or ...
ghusbands 5y ago
Sure, but a 20/80 split is not enough of a consensus to claim that the "jif" pronunciation is entirely wrong, rather than an accepted alternative. With that kind of ratio, there will be areas where "jif" is the accepted pronunciation.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> How can you call it lack of consensus when it’s 80-20, Because, even if this were a valid (random sample of the target population) survey, 1 in 5 is a lot, especially given the fact that the distribution of pronunciation is not homogeneous geographically or by other divides that define distinct subgroups of language use. > I think it’s pretty obvious that there’s a strong consensus it’s a hard G I think the existence of ongoing debate among speakers of the language as to the correct pronunciation is strong evidence that there is no consensus.

by Lewton 5y ago

Dylan16807 5y ago

> (techies are way more likely to pronounce it jif) Oh? Why do you say that? I mean, I doubt knowing what the creator said has that big of an impact but maybe I'm wrong on that. > I think it’s pretty obvious that there’s a strong consensus it’s a hard G Show me a poll that doesn't tell you the answer in the options. When one of the answers is "gif", and it wins as the pronunciation for "gif", that's a useless result.

Lewton 5y ago
> Oh? Why do you say that? I mean, I doubt knowing what the creator said has that big of an impact but maybe I'm wrong on that. Are you gonna argue that there exists a significant number of people that would pronounce it jif with no prompting? That's quite a stretch
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  I was saying it long before hearing anything about the inventor. When you say 'no prompting', you mean just finding it in text with no context? Hell if I know whether people blindly guess it's like "give" or "gin" but neither one seems super obvious over the other unless you treat it like it's derived from the word "gift". If you say it in front of someone and they possibly correct you, I don't know why the techy version would differ from the average person version.
  - Lewton 5y ago
    I meant that the average techie person is much more likely to know what the creator intended for the pronunciation and are therefore more likely to say jif I personally don't know anyone who'd pronounce it with a j sound and I severely doubt anyone in my country would default to a j sound, but I'm open to that being cultural. I just think the fact that hard G wins by such a landslide is pretty good evidence that defaulting to a j sound is incredibly rare
    - ghusbands 5y ago
      Ah, so you aren't saying a majority of techies will use 'jif' (which is I think what many are reading from "techies are way more likely to pronounce it jif"), but just that they are more likely than non-techies to do so, given the prior knowledge. Fair. A 20/80 split in a poll in a world in which lots of people are correcting others towards a hard G indicates that there's plenty of people choosing to pronounce it like "gin" or "gist" or "gelatin" or "genius" or "generous" or "genetic" or "giant" or "gymnast" or "ginger" or ...

ghusbands 5y ago

Sure, but a 20/80 split is not enough of a consensus to claim that the "jif" pronunciation is entirely wrong, rather than an accepted alternative. With that kind of ratio, there will be areas where "jif" is the accepted pronunciation.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> How can you call it lack of consensus when it’s 80-20, Because, even if this were a valid (random sample of the target population) survey, 1 in 5 is a lot, especially given the fact that the distribution of pronunciation is not homogeneous geographically or by other divides that define distinct subgroups of language use. > I think it’s pretty obvious that there’s a strong consensus it’s a hard G I think the existence of ongoing debate among speakers of the language as to the correct pronunciation is strong evidence that there is no consensus.