People don’t say “gif” a lot in conversations with me, but it’s always been with a hard ‘g’ when they do. In fact, I don’t think I’ve actually heard it pronounced otherwise.
I’m in the UK, though, so maybe it’s an accent thing.
1 Like
Surely that would be that they “jiv jifts”?
Jood jreif!
[quote=“daneel, post:27, topic:23534”]I’m totally pronouncing it Yiff from now on. …
But I’m not a linguist so I’m probably completely wrong.[/quote]
Yif is a perfectly reasonable rendering on linguistic grounds. Many Old English words, now spelled with a leading Y, were originally spelled with a leading G(i) - actually it was another letter no longer in the alphabet but it was close to the scandinavian g which is, in any case, mostly pronounced today like a Y.
1 Like
Nah. The Jiv Jifts is OK, but it would still be Good Grief because the softening of the G is only prone when it turns up before a front-vowel like I or E. Before consonants (like L and R) or back-vowels (A, O, U), it stays hard. Obviously that’s not an absolute rule, spellingwise, but it’s a pretty reliable guide.
This certainly explains the very weird pronunciation of ‘vacuum cleaner’ as ‘hoover’.
None of that J-crap here in German-speaking-country, I´m happy to report.
Ich schicke Ihnen ein GIF, Herr Müller.
1 Like
Giant
Gibberish
Gigolo
Ginny (the name)
Gin (the beverage)
Gist
Gypsy
Ginger
Giraffe
Contrariwise…
Gift
Give
Girth
Gird
Gizmo
Girl
Gigawatt (unless 1.21)
Gild
Giggle
Gimmick
Gimp
Gingko
Gizzard
I dunno, guys.
It’s almost as if an acronym that was never meant to be pronounced, and that happens to have a structure that could place it on either side of an arbitrary linguistic divide, engenders different pronunciations in different people - perhaps even influenced by their regional dialects; the breadth, variety, and specificity of their vocabularies; and even their personal psychologies, mnemonics, and cognitive associations!
How about we just all agree that BOTH are correct? Kind of like how Americans say “fries” and Brits say “chips”, or how Octopuses is just as acceptable as both Octopi and Octopodes?
Screw all you Alumin-i-um bastards, though. 
I mean, it’s just demonstrably wrong. The scientist who discovered the element named it Aluminum. Then some busy-body journalist said “No, I don’t like that, it doesn’t fit my personal arbitrary tastes and sense of propriety!” and decided to promulgate and promote an alternative spelling and pronunciation, because ego.
Imagine if when Quarks were named, some talk show host in all seriousness said “Quarks? What the heck! That’s just stupid, we should call them Queerks instead!”. He’d be told off as a presumptuous idiot, and rightly so!
10 Likes
I’m similarly confused.
The only time I’ve encountered anything like a “dzj” sound in English is when hearing a Brit turn terms like “Duran Duran” into “Jew-ran Jew-ran”. 
1 Like
‘pronouncing it correctly’ I think you mean, dear boy…
2 Likes
On the one hand, I’ve always pronounced it with a hard G, because “gif” is any acronym, not a word, and the “G” stands for “graphics”. Something about “jif” just grates on my ears.
On the other hand… I’ve always pronounced the name of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, with an “sh”, because that’s the way discoverer James Christy pronounces it in honor of his wife, Charlene.
While we are on the subject…Checkmate Americans. You’ll notice it’s not “The Legos movie”.
3 Likes
I have never heard anyone pronounce it ‘djz’ or ‘j’. Just like gift, minus the t.
Get out o’ here with all your goofy garbage.
As many have said. Graphics Interchange Format. Done. I’ll go with the intuitively logical over the obscure historical rationale anytime.
Plus, there’s no other common hard g “gif” in English, but… there’s JIFF, as in the peanut butter, plus, the annoying short form of jiffy (I’ll do it in a jif, hon). Why have a 3rd meaning to the sound, when it can stand on its own with hard-g gif?
1 Like
I had no idea that people really gave a shit about this sort of thing. Having been so informed, I’d like to share with you all the sentiment that, if the internet had an off button and I had access to it, right at this moment I’d press that button, smash it so that no one could ever turn the internet back on again, and spend the rest of my pornless days distilling refreshing sports drinks from your endless tears.
Seriously, people.
(And please don’t tell Alan Moore that the V for Vendetta mask was used in this way, he’s cranky enough as it is.)
5 Likes
Hmmm… if the above statement is really true, then turning the internet off probably wouldn’t be very painful for you since you’ve obviously only been on it about 5 minutes.
2 Likes
This is my thought as well. I can’t think of another work stemming from gif- that has a jif pronunciation. Whatever the original intentions, this is the pronunciation I and my entire peer group have been using since the late 90s.
It’s been 13 years and it still rankles (especially as it’s apparently still Jif in Australia).
True. But as long as you don’t want animation and your image is larger than about 2x2 pixels, PNG-8 nearly always results in smaller files. So in the end, we all won.
How do you say it, then?
2 Likes
I’m still bitter about Marathons, too.
