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I believe in “death of the author” because I know how GIF should be pronounced! I hope this comment is a gift of laughter to you in your day.

karmakaze 5y ago
Does this mean that 'char' is also pronounced 'care'?
- aspenmayer 5y ago
  When it’s short for character, sure.
  - mordymoop 5y ago
    Or “charisma”!
  - karmakaze 5y ago
    Are you being serious? I only knew one person who did this in real life, and even they said it almost like 'car'.
    - aspenmayer 5y ago
      Totally serious. I think this pronunciation varies with accent.
- 0xabe 5y ago
  I had a professor who pronounced char as in “char-broiled”. At least it rhymed when she constantly repeated “char star”, referring to char pointers (char*).
  - ralferoo 5y ago
    This is how most programmers in the UK refer to it too.
  - karmakaze 5y ago
    That's how I learned it using C in the 80s. Maybe Millennials are redefining it too.
jjulius 5y ago
Gee, I know some gigantic, gentle, geriatric giraffes who would take umbridge with that pronunciation.
- nosianu 5y ago
  Because everybody knows GIF means Giraffe Interchange Format! It was invented by rangers in the Serengeti for keeping track of Giraffes changing between areas. They made graphics illustrating those movements, and the format they used became knows as GIF. That's the secret history of the image format.
  - sparky_z 5y ago
    The P in JPEG stands for "photographic". Do you pronounce it "jay-feg"?
    - nosianu 5y ago
      The situation is different. The first letter in "photo" is not the "p" but the "ph". They are one. The "h" is a modifier. In "graphics" there is no modifier on the "g". TL;DR H as modifier was introduced when translating Greek and they were lacking appropriate letters in Latin. https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/29625/origin-of-h-as-a-modifier-letter https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/29625/origin... https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-8814,00.html https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-88... -- last answer by Anastasio de la Luna (and a few other answers there too) > I'm a phoneticist and a general linguist and "PH" and "F" are, indeed, pronounced the same, and are both represented by /f/ in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Greek Phi was once pronounced as a hard "P" in Ancient Greek. So, Latin inscriptions wrote it as "PH" to show that it's a P sound, but with more air with H. As Greek changed, so did the Greek based English words. In Modern Greek, Phi is pronounced as "F", and no longer like "PH"/a hard P.
      - nosianu 5y ago
        ..and I forgot: That means that it should have been J-Ph-EG and not JPEG. They created a completely different first letter by ignoring that "ph" is one letter. The J-PEG pronunciation was obtained by using destructive force.
SllX 5y ago
Today I learned I have been pronouncing “gift” wrong my entire life and I should have been conforming to the “g” in “gif” or in “ginger”.

karmakaze 5y ago

Does this mean that 'char' is also pronounced 'care'?

aspenmayer 5y ago
When it’s short for character, sure.
- mordymoop 5y ago
  Or “charisma”!
- karmakaze 5y ago
  Are you being serious? I only knew one person who did this in real life, and even they said it almost like 'car'.
  - aspenmayer 5y ago
    Totally serious. I think this pronunciation varies with accent.
0xabe 5y ago
I had a professor who pronounced char as in “char-broiled”. At least it rhymed when she constantly repeated “char star”, referring to char pointers (char*).
- ralferoo 5y ago
  This is how most programmers in the UK refer to it too.
- karmakaze 5y ago
  That's how I learned it using C in the 80s. Maybe Millennials are redefining it too.

jjulius 5y ago

Gee, I know some gigantic, gentle, geriatric giraffes who would take umbridge with that pronunciation.

nosianu 5y ago
Because everybody knows GIF means Giraffe Interchange Format! It was invented by rangers in the Serengeti for keeping track of Giraffes changing between areas. They made graphics illustrating those movements, and the format they used became knows as GIF. That's the secret history of the image format.
- sparky_z 5y ago
  The P in JPEG stands for "photographic". Do you pronounce it "jay-feg"?
  - nosianu 5y ago
    The situation is different. The first letter in "photo" is not the "p" but the "ph". They are one. The "h" is a modifier. In "graphics" there is no modifier on the "g". TL;DR H as modifier was introduced when translating Greek and they were lacking appropriate letters in Latin. https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/29625/origin-of-h-as-a-modifier-letter https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/29625/origin... https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-8814,00.html https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-88... -- last answer by Anastasio de la Luna (and a few other answers there too) > I'm a phoneticist and a general linguist and "PH" and "F" are, indeed, pronounced the same, and are both represented by /f/ in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Greek Phi was once pronounced as a hard "P" in Ancient Greek. So, Latin inscriptions wrote it as "PH" to show that it's a P sound, but with more air with H. As Greek changed, so did the Greek based English words. In Modern Greek, Phi is pronounced as "F", and no longer like "PH"/a hard P.
    - nosianu 5y ago
      ..and I forgot: That means that it should have been J-Ph-EG and not JPEG. They created a completely different first letter by ignoring that "ph" is one letter. The J-PEG pronunciation was obtained by using destructive force.

SllX 5y ago

Today I learned I have been pronouncing “gift” wrong my entire life and I should have been conforming to the “g” in “gif” or in “ginger”.