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I've said "jif" for almost 40 years, and I'm not stopping anytime soon. Hard-g is wrong, and those who use it are showing they have zero respect for others whe

by LocalH 1y ago

I've said "jif" for almost 40 years, and I'm not stopping anytime soon. Hard-g is wrong, and those who use it are showing they have zero respect for others when they don't have to. It's the tech equivalent to the shopping cart problem. What do you do when there is no incentive one way or the other? Do you do the right thing, or do you disrespect others?

pwdisswordfishz 1y ago
Linguistic prescriptivism is wrong, and people who promote it are showing they have zero respect for others when they don't have to.
- LocalH 1y ago
  I agree that language is fluid. However, when it comes to names, I think people should have enough respect to pronounce things how the creator (or owner, depending on the situation) of the name says it should be pronounced. Too often people will mispronounce someone's name as a sign of intentional disrespect (see Kamala Harris for a fairly recent prominent example) and I cannot get behind that. You see a similar disrespect in the hard-soft discourse around the pronunciation of GIF. A lot of people use the hard g and mock the creator for thinking that soft g should ever have been right. Naming is probably one of the few language areas that I think should be prescriptive, even while language at large is descriptive.
  - Analemma_ 1y ago
    I don’t think technical standards merit the same level of “deference to the creator” as personal names. People are wrong about standards they created all the time (ask me what I think about John Gruber’s “stewardship” of Markdown) and should be corrected, a standard is meant for all. Obviously the pronunciation of an acronym isn’t anywhere near as important as technical details, but I think the principle holds.
    - asadotzler 1y ago
      People are wrong about the children they create all the time too, and should be corrected.
      - LocalH 1y ago
        A child is presumably a sentient being, and at some point in their life should gain control of their name. In fact, they do, to some large degree. There are means to change one's legal name, or one can diverge from their legal name and professionally/publicly use a completely different name. A file format is not a sentient being. The creator's intent matters much more. If GIF had sentience and could voice a desire one way or the other, the whole discussion would be moot as it would clearly be disrespectful to intentionally mispronounce the name.
  - mandmandam 1y ago
    If the creator insists on a weird pronunciation, because of an inside joke most won't ever get, then I feel no responsibility in humoring them. The G in gif is for graphics. Not 'giraffics'. And most people in the world have no idea what Jif even is, much less a particular catchphrase from an old ad campaign that barely even connects.
    - ziml77 1y ago
      And the P in JPEG is for photographic, so you better be saying jay-feg if you want to rely on that logic.
      - joquarky 1y ago
        If everyone conformed, then we would have no fun lively debates on things like this. That would be a boring world.
- xdennis 1y ago
  Linguistic prescriptivism has nothing to do with it. English has both pronunciations for "gi" based on origin. Giraffe, giant, ginger, etc from Latin; gift, give, (and presumably others) from Germanic roots. Using the preferred one is just a matter of politeness. Also, it's quite ironic to prescribe "linguistic prescriptivism" as wrong.
  - account42 1y ago
    Insisting on one out of multiple possible pronunciations when most people naturally pick a different one is the definition of linguistic prescriptivism. Politeness doesn't have anything to do with it, people are not required to let individuals dictate how our collective language works.
i80and 1y ago
Is this a bit?
- LocalH 1y ago
  Absolutely not. See my response to your sibling comment. Choosy nerds choose "GIF".
  - rhet0rica 1y ago
    Unfortunately for your crusade, the soft-G pronunciation has essentially been typo-squatted since before typo-squatting was a thing. https://file.org/extension/jif https://file.org/extension/jif https://fileinfo.com/extension/jiff https://fileinfo.com/extension/jiff https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4rirr8/til_that_jif_was_an_image_file_format_whose/ https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4rirr8/til_t... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG#JPEG_files https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG#JPEG_files
npteljes 1y ago
As much as I hate jif, thinking about it, "GPU" works the same - we say gee-pee-you and not gh-pee-you. Garbage Collection is also gee-cee. So it's only logical that jif is the correct one - even if it's not the widely accepted one. Wrt/ communication, aside from personal preference, one can either respect the creator, or the audience. If I stand in front of 10 colleagues, 10 out of them would not understand jif, or would only get it because this issue has some history now. gif on the other hand has no friction. Ghengis Khan for example sounds very different from its original Mongolian pronunciation. And there is a myriad others as well.
- LocalH 1y ago
  The whole debate seems to be a modern phenomenon to me - from my anecdotal experience back in the day, it was never questioned by computer enthusiasts that it was pronounced "jif".
  - eCa 1y ago
    I (as a non-native English speaker) have pronounced it with a hard g since first i saw it (mid ’90s) and many years before I learned how the creator preferred it to be pronounced. I continue to pronounce it how I prefer it, not as a slight, but most people here would be surprised by the soft g. If I ever meet him I’ll attempt to pronounce it soft-g. On the other hand, even though my name exists and is reasonably common in English, I’m fairly certain neither you or the GIF creator would address me the way I pronounce my name. I would understand anyway, and wouldn’t care one bit.
  - npteljes 1y ago
    I have the same experience - but with gif. Mind you, me and my circle are not native English speakers. The debate itself is old. "Since the 90s" Wikipedia says, and keep in mind the format was is from 1987 - so I would say the debate is on from the get-go. Appropriate, too, if you think back, arguing about this kind of stuff was pretty common. Emacs vs vim, browser wars, different kinds of computers, tribalism everywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_GIF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_GIF
bigfishrunning 1y ago
pronounce the jraphics interchange format any way you want, everyone knows what you're talking about anyway -- try not to get so worked up. It's not the shopping cart problem, because no-one is measurably harmed by not choosing the same pronunciation as you.
- LocalH 1y ago
  i'll start using hard-g gif when you start saying "jfeg" ;)

by LocalH 1y ago

pwdisswordfishz 1y ago

Linguistic prescriptivism is wrong, and people who promote it are showing they have zero respect for others when they don't have to.

LocalH 1y ago
I agree that language is fluid. However, when it comes to names, I think people should have enough respect to pronounce things how the creator (or owner, depending on the situation) of the name says it should be pronounced. Too often people will mispronounce someone's name as a sign of intentional disrespect (see Kamala Harris for a fairly recent prominent example) and I cannot get behind that. You see a similar disrespect in the hard-soft discourse around the pronunciation of GIF. A lot of people use the hard g and mock the creator for thinking that soft g should ever have been right. Naming is probably one of the few language areas that I think should be prescriptive, even while language at large is descriptive.
- Analemma_ 1y ago
  I don’t think technical standards merit the same level of “deference to the creator” as personal names. People are wrong about standards they created all the time (ask me what I think about John Gruber’s “stewardship” of Markdown) and should be corrected, a standard is meant for all. Obviously the pronunciation of an acronym isn’t anywhere near as important as technical details, but I think the principle holds.
  - asadotzler 1y ago
    People are wrong about the children they create all the time too, and should be corrected.
    - LocalH 1y ago
      A child is presumably a sentient being, and at some point in their life should gain control of their name. In fact, they do, to some large degree. There are means to change one's legal name, or one can diverge from their legal name and professionally/publicly use a completely different name. A file format is not a sentient being. The creator's intent matters much more. If GIF had sentience and could voice a desire one way or the other, the whole discussion would be moot as it would clearly be disrespectful to intentionally mispronounce the name.
- mandmandam 1y ago
  If the creator insists on a weird pronunciation, because of an inside joke most won't ever get, then I feel no responsibility in humoring them. The G in gif is for graphics. Not 'giraffics'. And most people in the world have no idea what Jif even is, much less a particular catchphrase from an old ad campaign that barely even connects.
  - ziml77 1y ago
    And the P in JPEG is for photographic, so you better be saying jay-feg if you want to rely on that logic.
    - joquarky 1y ago
      If everyone conformed, then we would have no fun lively debates on things like this. That would be a boring world.
xdennis 1y ago
Linguistic prescriptivism has nothing to do with it. English has both pronunciations for "gi" based on origin. Giraffe, giant, ginger, etc from Latin; gift, give, (and presumably others) from Germanic roots. Using the preferred one is just a matter of politeness. Also, it's quite ironic to prescribe "linguistic prescriptivism" as wrong.
- account42 1y ago
  Insisting on one out of multiple possible pronunciations when most people naturally pick a different one is the definition of linguistic prescriptivism. Politeness doesn't have anything to do with it, people are not required to let individuals dictate how our collective language works.

i80and 1y ago

Is this a bit?

LocalH 1y ago
Absolutely not. See my response to your sibling comment. Choosy nerds choose "GIF".
- rhet0rica 1y ago
  Unfortunately for your crusade, the soft-G pronunciation has essentially been typo-squatted since before typo-squatting was a thing. https://file.org/extension/jif https://file.org/extension/jif https://fileinfo.com/extension/jiff https://fileinfo.com/extension/jiff https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4rirr8/til_that_jif_was_an_image_file_format_whose/ https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4rirr8/til_t... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG#JPEG_files https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG#JPEG_files

npteljes 1y ago

As much as I hate jif, thinking about it, "GPU" works the same - we say gee-pee-you and not gh-pee-you. Garbage Collection is also gee-cee. So it's only logical that jif is the correct one - even if it's not the widely accepted one. Wrt/ communication, aside from personal preference, one can either respect the creator, or the audience. If I stand in front of 10 colleagues, 10 out of them would not understand jif, or would only get it because this issue has some history now. gif on the other hand has no friction. Ghengis Khan for example sounds very different from its original Mongolian pronunciation. And there is a myriad others as well.

LocalH 1y ago
The whole debate seems to be a modern phenomenon to me - from my anecdotal experience back in the day, it was never questioned by computer enthusiasts that it was pronounced "jif".
- eCa 1y ago
  I (as a non-native English speaker) have pronounced it with a hard g since first i saw it (mid ’90s) and many years before I learned how the creator preferred it to be pronounced. I continue to pronounce it how I prefer it, not as a slight, but most people here would be surprised by the soft g. If I ever meet him I’ll attempt to pronounce it soft-g. On the other hand, even though my name exists and is reasonably common in English, I’m fairly certain neither you or the GIF creator would address me the way I pronounce my name. I would understand anyway, and wouldn’t care one bit.
- npteljes 1y ago
  I have the same experience - but with gif. Mind you, me and my circle are not native English speakers. The debate itself is old. "Since the 90s" Wikipedia says, and keep in mind the format was is from 1987 - so I would say the debate is on from the get-go. Appropriate, too, if you think back, arguing about this kind of stuff was pretty common. Emacs vs vim, browser wars, different kinds of computers, tribalism everywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_GIF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_GIF

bigfishrunning 1y ago

pronounce the jraphics interchange format any way you want, everyone knows what you're talking about anyway -- try not to get so worked up. It's not the shopping cart problem, because no-one is measurably harmed by not choosing the same pronunciation as you.

LocalH 1y ago
i'll start using hard-g gif when you start saying "jfeg" ;)