4 ms·
Poll: "Giff" or "Jif"?
How do you pronounce it?
- DrinkWater 13y agoJif? i had no idea people pronounce it like that.
- tokenizer 13y agoYeah, the creator has recently come out and has said that that is the correct pronunciation. Link: http://metro.co.uk/2013/05/22/twitter-in-uproar-as-gif-creator-says-its-pronounced-jif-3804122/ http://metro.co.uk/2013/05/22/twitter-in-uproar-as-gif-creat...
- martin_ 13y agoAlistair Coleman added: ‘[Creator] of the Gif says it’s pronounced “jif”. Why didn’t he say so earlier, the gerk?’
- tokenizer 13y agoI'm only 23 years old, and I hail from the East Coast of Canada. I've never heard anyone pronounce it "Jif", but I had read on reddit that some people have had the opposite experience, never hearing the "Giff" pronunciation.
- sejje 13y agoI only know one guy who says giff. I've always said jif, and frankly probably the rest of my circles were influenced by my pronunciation until lately. The giff guy won't budge.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bentruyman 13y agoI've pronounced it like JIF since the mid-90's when I first learned of GIFs. I've had to send many people here to prove I wasn't crazy: http://www.olsenhome.com/gif/ http://www.olsenhome.com/gif/
- AndrewDucker 13y agoThank you. I had no idea that PNG was supposed to be pronounced "Ping" (I always say Pee Enn Gee)
- qznc 13y agoQT should be pronounced "cute", but I say "queue-tee". Linux is pronounced with a short i, but most americans say "lie-nux". As a german I say "Lee-nux". Xing is allegedly pronounced "crossing", but I say "ksing".
- jcastro 13y agoAlso surprised at the number of people who call nginx "en jinx" instead of "engine x"
- brazzy 13y agoIt really surprises you that names based on cute misspellings that are effectively unpronouncable when taken at face value get pronounced differently by different people? If Syosev wanted people to pronounce it "engine x", he should have called it "engine x".
- nodata 13y ago> Xing is allegedly pronounced "crossing", but I say "ksing". Got any info on this? I've heard this only several times (i.e. rarely). Always from people who are used to the "crossing" signs, but never from anybody else.
- vhf 13y ago> QT should be pronounced "cute", but I say "queue-tee". I think we would say "queue-tee" if it was QT instead of Qt. To me, "cute" makes more sense for "Qt".
- loranger 13y agoGiff
- stevebrowne 13y agoI worked at CompuServe in the 90s and it was only ever referred to as "Giff"
- daGrevis 13y agoLike "gift" w/o "t".
- Zlatty 13y agoMaybe its like one of those cola vs. soda vs. pop things that is based on geography ... http://quittingsoda.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/popvssodamap.gif http://quittingsoda.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/popvssoda...
- upthedale 13y agoDoesn't the G stand for Graphics? That has a hard G, so I pronounce GIF with one too.
- freyr 13y agoDo you say 'mie·elf' too?
- portmanteaufu 13y agoIn considering the alternative, I found myself saying "Giraffe-ics" and giggled.
- jvzr 13y agoIn France, G and J have the opposite sound: J sounds like G, and G like J. Makes sense? ;-) As such, everybody pronounces it "JIF" here. And it seems to go in the author's direction, so it's fine.
- eclecnant 13y agoIs that "JIF" meant to be pronounced in English or French, then? ;)
- jvzr 13y ago"jee-f" :)
- zapshu 13y agoI'm French and I never heard someone pronouncing it "JIF".
- jvzr 13y agoWell then I guess even us do have different pronunciations. I'm from Lyon and everyone I know, be it friends, family or colleagues, say "jee-f".
- foobarbuzz 13y ago"They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.": http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/an-honor-for-the-creator-of-the-gif/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/an-honor-for-the-cr...
- dietrichepp 13y agoMost linguists would agree that it is logically contradictory to state that the majority of speakers pronounce a word incorrectly, because the correct pronunciation is determined by observing how people actually say a word, and not how one very special person thinks other people should pronounce it.
- brazzy 13y agoIsn't prescriptivism vs. descriptivism actually a very old divide among linguists?
- dietrichepp 13y agoIt is a very old divide, and the descriptivists won a very long time ago. I'm sure there are prescriptivist linguists around somewhere but I haven't met them.
- zan5hin 13y agoWho the fuck cares.
- yashg 13y agoFor me it has always been Jee Eye Ef. No confusion.
- sageikosa 13y agoJif, like this file loads in a jif compared to a bitmap.
- jpswade 13y agoIf you have to pronounce it, you're working the Internet wrong...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- chris-j 13y agoSo lots of us are pronouncing it wrong. Will anyone make an effort to change? I know I won't.
- digitalsushi 13y agochoosy websites choose gif.
- jonheller 13y agoThere are a lot of examples in linguistics where the "correct" pronunciation of a word is not the common pronunciation, and so the common pronunciation becomes the correct one. I've heard maybe one in every twenty people pronunce it as "jif", and when they do so it's not because it seems like it's the natural pronunciation, it's because they once read it was the correct was to pronounce it and want to hammer that fact home. So I'm sticking with the hard g version.
- mihok 13y agoI mean, I can only speak from personal experience, but I always call gif, jif, and it has nothing to do with whether its correct pronunciation or not. I just read it like that and could care less about the facts
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jensnockert 13y agoBoth are from a linguistic perspective obviously correct since 'native' speakers use both pronunciations. Linguistics isn't prescriptive in that way, you cannot use it to say that a minority is pronouncing something wrong.
- gamache 13y agoWell, if this is pronoucned "jif" then that means it's also "rejex". And what kind of world is that.
- hiroshi3110 13y agoIn Japan, I never met the people pronounce it "Giff". Always we call it「ジフ」"Jif". Some pronounce git as "jit". Because we pronounce "G" as "Jee".
- jpluimers 13y agoPNG (;
- SoapSeller 13y agoJIF is already taken by JPEG[0], so GIF, with a hard G. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_Interchange_Format#JPEG_files http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_Interchange_Format#JPEG_fi...
- nodata 13y agoI think GIF came before JPEG.
- mootmarketing 13y agoJif FTW
- dlsym 13y agoHow about: "gitt" vs. "jit"
- upthedale 13y agoThe former of course. Because Linus is a git :) Though my French boss goes for the latter, but with a very soft J. In fact, he pronounces it like 'Gîte' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gîte http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gîte for the pronunciation guide.
- rucker 13y agoI'm in the "jif" crowd. This means that I always want to pronounce "git" as in "Github" with a soft g, which is wrong.
- bradpitt 13y agobecause of "jif", I thought that "gift" is pronounced as "jift" (that was not so long ago :)
- gr3yh47 13y agoGraphic Interchange Format Grrh Ih Foh ggggiiihhhhfffffff Gif gif
- dundadad 13y agoHe finally got the courage to speak up. 26 years later. That's a geek for you. But thanks for the Gif!
- Fuzzwah 13y agoThis question always reminded me of the discussion we used to have in the early Quake scene; hard G or J for the word gib. Hard G always made more sense to me, but then I heard someone from id software explain that it should be a J, since the root of the word was "giblets". Even knowing I'm not saying it the same was as the person who coined the phrase couldn't make me change. hard G gib just sounded more correct!
- mikeratcliffe 13y agoIf the inventor pronounces it jif then it is pronounced jif, case closed.
- DerKommissar 13y agoAnother one is Asus. I always thought it was "A-sys". Turns out it's "Uh-seuss" like Dr. Seuss, with the accent over the last syllable.