Every grammar lesson and rule I’ve come across, and all of my daughter’s phonics worksheets agree that g followed by I, e, or y is a soft g. So he can claim whatever he wants, but it’s always “gif” like “gift” for me. He was a brilliant programmer, and unwittingly birthed an entire culture, but that doesn’t give him carte blanche to rewrite established language rules.
Edit: as pointed out below, I meant hard, not soft. I have no excuse.
Well, yeah. We are talking about a grammar/phonics question.
Giraffic Interchange Format
Au contraire
You’re aware this is ENGLISH, right? And you think there are… rules?
EDIT: I want to point out that the Storied Youtube channel is really great, by the way. They just posted this one today, but they’ve got a really interesting backlog of stuff related to language and stories and cultural views, etc.
Gin Gift
Gel Get
Gypsum Gynecology
What a prankster. Kept that JIF-GIF joke going to the day he died. Absolute legend.
If you insist.
Won’t swear that it’s the right material though.
If you think that’s a hard-and-fast rule you could give your girl a gift of a giraffe GIF, if you get my gist.
Personally I pronounce it “GIF” because the G stands for “Graphic,” not because of some inconsistent and arbitrary rule about “g-i” words.
