5 ms·
Father of GIFs: 'It's Pronounced JIF'
- groundCode 13y agohmm defacto vs dejure if you ask me
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- oneeyedpigeon 13y agoSorry, after 25 years of pronouncing it the way it's spelt, "GIF" is too ingrained - I simply cannot pronounce it any other way.
- gagege 13y agoI don't know why, but I've always said 'jif'. 'gif' sounds so wrong to me. Same with Quake players saying 'gibbed' instead of 'jibbed'. The 'G' sounds makes me throw up a little.
- oneeyedpigeon 13y agoThere was a brand of kitchen cleaner marketed in my country as Jif, since renamed Cif. I think most people in the UK favour the hard G for the file format, because invoking images of kitchen cleaner when you're discussing image files is just a distraction :-)
- gagege 13y agoGood point. In the US we have Jif peanut butter. That's where the name comes from. The slogan was "Choosy moms choose Jif." And so the .gif slogan is "Choosy developers choose Gif."
- riffraff 13y agooh, Cif is an english name? How do you pronounce that ? I am under the impression there aren't many words starting with "ci" in english but I think they mostly sound like "see" (e.g. circuit). Of course, for me it's pronounced as "cheef", which goes perfectly with "jeef" :)
- oneeyedpigeon 13y agoNo, I think it's a 'European' name: I.e. it was branded Cif across Europe, and only Jif in Britain, until recently. I'm not sure of the specific origin of the name; either way, it's pronounced the same way as the start of the word "sit"
- sigzero 13y agoIt will forever be a hard "G" sound regardless of what the author intended.
- riffraff 13y agowell, I always pronounced like that, yay :)
- vanni 13y agoMe too! Well... it's because we are Italians, so the "JIF" pronunciation sounds much more natural to us.
- Guillaume86 13y agoMe too (as a french speaker)
- Yaa101 13y agoHe should have called it .jif then
- apineda 13y agojrafics interchange format
- forgetcolor 13y agouh, no, it's really not.
- scotthtaylor 13y agoThis "jif" illustrates my feelings towards that pronounciation: http://gph.is/XJQ7rp http://gph.is/XJQ7rp
- sp332 13y agoSome discussion from a larger story earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5748439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5748439
- rogerclark 13y agowho gives a shit
- waterlesscloud 13y agoOf course it is. This was never really debatable.
- bluthru 13y ago"I'd like a gin and tonic." "It's pronounced 'jin'." "WHAT?! I DON'T CARE! I'LL DO WHAT I WANT!" (If people were irrational about a similar word's pronunciation.)
- obviouslygreen 13y agoThat's one way to look at it... another is that "gin" is a word, and "GIF" is an acronym. If you want to pronounce it, it's "jee eye eff." This, of course, is from someone in the unapologetic hard-g camp. :)
- gagege 13y agoYes, for some reason folks get so upset at me when I tell them 'jif' is the author-intended pronunciation.
- donutdan4114 13y agoGIF is an acronym. GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format. The word graphics starts with a "g" that sounds like gurgle, good, golf, gallbladder, gun, grapes, etc... NOT giraffe. Thus, it should be pronounce "giff". The inventor of GIF made a format, but he didn't invent acronyms. Pronouncing it like "jiff" would be like pronouncing GIF like "fignewtons". It doesn't make sense. Giff4life.
- bluthru 13y agoAs stated elsewhere... Acronyms don't strictly take on the pronunciation of their constructive words. SCUBA, POTUS, NASA, etc. all deviate from the phonetics of the words used to construct the acronym. Why do people take this so personally?
- jwheeler79 13y agoThis is a simple one: if he wanted it pronounced 'JIF', he shouldn't have spelled it GIF.
- wwweston 13y agoOr called it the Jraffics Interchange File. Or Giraffeics, that would work too.
- breadbox 13y agoThe parallels with "gigga" vs "jigga" (for the pronunciation of the metric prefix) are striking. I've met a couple of people recently who weren't even aware of the 2nd pronunciation, and a lot of the people who are don't realize that both pronunciations are accepted.
- softbuilder 13y agoWait, so Doc Brown's 1.28 jigawatts is legit?
- pasquinelli 13y agoit's true, it is pronounced jif. it's also pronounced gif.
- Steko 13y agoI hope he pronounces everything like the Saxons would have since, apparently, the rabble isn't allowed to change language.
- moron4hire 13y agoI neither get the insistence it is pronounced one way or the other, nor the insistence that one will not change how they pronounce it, for any word.
- downandout 13y agoI wasn't even aware that this was up for debate. I've pronounced it with a "j" since I had a 1200 baud modem dialing up to BBS's. That's just...how it's pronounced.
- pud 13y agoWords change. That's how language works. Society agrees it's pronounced "gif", it's pronounced "gif". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_linguistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_linguistics
- vec 13y agoOff topic, but 5 words? I know external constraints force creativity and all that, but there's just not that much one can actually say in 5 words. Besides, wouldn't 130 characters (~20 english words) have been more in keeping with the spirit of the evening?
- kmm 13y agoI realize it's a joke (or I hope so) but it's really not up to him to decide. Language is one of the most democratic things we know, without totalitarian oppression, you can't really change the pronunciation of a word.
- bluthru 13y agoIt's more like the father of his kid telling you that you're pronouncing the kid's name wrong. This word is only 25 years old, not centuries.
- kmm 13y agoThe age hardly matters, language works fast. And this is not some relative mispronouncing it, this is millions of people using a pronunciation that makes more sense etymologically.
- darkchasma 13y agoHow embarassing for him, he doesn't even know how to pronounce his own technology.
- mdip 13y agoPronunciation of words I nearly exclusively see in print is a big frustration of mine. I remember a decade ago trying to figure out if Linux was pronounced "Lih-nux" or "Lye-nux". I had originally assumed it was the latter because of the way I assume Linus Torvalds pronounces his name (I'm not so clear on that even), but found a write-up on the web where he cleared it up (and don't even get me started on Guh-New-Slash-Lih-Nux). Then lets go for SQL (es-queue-ell or sequel?), SCSI (very few would have guessed "scuzzy" if they hadn't already heard someone say it), my personal favorite "PWN" (I'm still not clear on that). I'm a non-JIF GIF pronouncer. I know how it's supposed to be pronounced, but it had been part of my vocabulary for almost a decade before I discovered the right pronunciation. And in North America, JIF is a very well advertised brand of peanut-butter. Person A: Can you send me that JIF? Person B: Sure (heads to fridge) I doubt I will ever say this (or even want to say this) correctly.
- meepmorp 13y agoNo, it's pronounced /d͡ʒɪf/.
- thpoul 13y agoJustice served! Finally!
- kunai 13y agoI always pronounce it "Jee Eye Ef." Maybe I'm just weird that way.
- jlgreco 13y agoSimilarly, I refuse to pronounce "PNG" as anything other than "Pee En Gee".
- dsl 13y agoMore of an absentee father if you ask me, which means he shouldn't be involved in how the baby is named.
- gte910h 13y agoThat's not how language works. Things are pronounced how they are.
- medecau 13y agoLet's agree to disagree and move the fuck on.
- jack-r-abbit 13y agoAnyone who corrects me on how I pronounce GIF is just as much a pompous jack ass as the person that would correct me on how I pronounce tomato, potato, schedule, apricot or pecan.
- beothorn 13y agoOfftopic but kinda related. Father of the "Dothraki", the language used on game of thrones says you're all pronouncing Khaleesi WRONG http://io9.com/youre-all-pronouncing-khaleesi-wrong-478779791 http://io9.com/youre-all-pronouncing-khaleesi-wrong-47877979...