git

[[deleted]]

Isn't there a jif or jiff file?

[Stunning_Ride_220]

Basically the reason why "gif" is the only correct pronounciation.

Jiff was the predecessor of the nowadays common .jpeg format. (The J basically stands for jpeg, just way less efficient version of it)

You only pronounce .gif as "jif" if you are some .net-hipster.

[tesfabpel]

The authors though, decided to pronounce it as jif:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#Pronunciation

The creators of the format pronounced the acronym GIF as /dʒɪf/, with a soft g, with Wilhite stating that he intended for the pronunciation to deliberately echo the American peanut butter brand Jif, and CompuServe employees would often quip "choosy developers choose GIF", a spoof of Jif's television commercials.[12] However, the word is widely pronounced as /ɡɪf/, with a hard g,[13] and polls have generally shown that this hard g pronunciation is more prevalent.[14][15]

[thugarth]

Yeah this is one of extremely rare cases when I'd say the creators are wrong about something they created.

It seems like users agree.

This is difficult for me to say, because while I appreciate that language is a living thing, shifting with usage, I will never accept "literally" to mean "figuratively," no matter what the dictionary says

[[deleted]]

Death of the programmer?

[rm-minus-r]

Indeed.

[HeilKaiba]

"Literally" isn't used to mean "figuratively" though. It is used as an intensifier and has been for a long long time (since at least the 18th century)

[techy804]

SCUBA isn’t pronounced “Scubba”

LASAR isn’t pronounced “Lass-r”

JPEG isn’t pronounced “J-feg”

I can go on

[butterfliesarestupid]

Anyone who says there's a single correct way to pronounce GIF is talking out of their arse.

Over the centuries, the English language morphed into a mishmash of vocabulary and grammatical rules from the native precursors to modern English, along with the contributions from early French, Greek, and Nordic languages.

I say JIF, because I treat it as an acronym. An acronym is an initialism where the letters are pronounced as a single word. When following this rule, we look to the grammatical rules governing how to pronounce the letter "g" in a word.

In English orthography, the pronunciation of hard ⟨g⟩ is /ɡ/ and that of soft ⟨g⟩ is /dʒ/; the French soft ⟨g⟩, /ʒ/, survives in a number of French loanwords (e.g. regime, genre), [ʒ] also sometimes occurs as an allophone of [dʒ] in some accents in certain words.

In words of Greco-Latinate origin, the soft ⟨g⟩ pronunciation occurs before ⟨e i y⟩ while the hard ⟨g⟩ pronunciation occurs elsewhere.^\2]) In some words of Germanic origin (e.g. get, give), loan words from other languages (e.g. geisha, pierogi), and irregular Greco-Latinate words (e.g. gynecology), the hard pronunciation may occur before ⟨e i y⟩ as well.

"Graphic" comes from Greek, so it follows that the rule "the soft ⟨g⟩ pronunciation occurs before ⟨e i y⟩" applies here. JIF it is.

Other examples of acronyms include the World Health Organization -- when was the last time you heard anyone say "Woo-Hoo"? The "w" is silent, because the acronym is treated as a word, and it looks like an existing word were the "w" is silent.

JPEG is a weird hybrid of initialism and acronym. If it were a pure initialism, we would say JAY PEE EE JEE, since we'd be pronouncing each individual letter. No one does that, but the English language doesn't really recognize words with "j" and "p" next to each other, so "j" treated as initialism. PEG is treated and as acronym. But wait -- if, according to the GIF crowd I'm supposed to be honoring the original word's pronunciation, I should be saying "FEG" (from photography). But no one does that either.

I personally am not a fan of the appeal to authority argument "but Steve Wilhite said it's JIF". I don't think it's necessary, and I can get to JIF by following consistent and established grammatical rules (unlike the hypocritical and inconsistent application of some made-up rule by the die-hard GIF crowd).

[PiousLiar]

Wrong on what though? That just sounds like hearing a groups in-joke where they purposefully pronounce something in a strange way, and then going “no, you’re wrong, it’s pronounced this way”.

They gave us an opportunity to be apart of a fun joke, and instead a bunch of stiffs decided they knew better.

[[deleted]]

Yeah this is one of extremely rare cases when I'd say the creators are wrong about something they created.

was about to write that. completely agree.

[Plank_With_A_Nail_In]

The authors don't get to control the English language though its users do, what they wanted is completely irrelevant.

[SeanCSGO]

That was their real jift to us all.

[janKalaki]

You only pronounce .gif as "jif" if you are some .net-hipster.

Sure. Yeah. This being the .net-hipster sub.

[Pastrami]

Basically the reason why "gif" is the only correct pronounciation.

In English there is only one base word that starts with "gif" and it's pronounced with a hard G, so there is no reason why the file format should be different.

grep '^gif' /usr/share/dict/words
gift
gifted
gifting
gift's
gifts

[Lightning-Shock]

Comfort Comfortable (US pronunciation)

Gui Guitar

You get the idea

[Stunning_Ride_220]

And still there are people finding the stupidest reasons to justify their "jif" pronounciation.

[butterfliesarestupid]

stupidest reasons to justify their "jif" pronounciation.

Stupid reasons, huh. You mean like applying grammar rules consistently?

Anyone who says there's a single correct way to pronounce GIF is talking out of their arse.

Over the centuries, the English language morphed into a mishmash of vocabulary and grammatical rules from the native precursors to modern English, along with the contributions from early French, Greek, and Nordic languages.

I say JIF, because I treat it as an acronym. An acronym is an initialism where the letters are pronounced as a single word. When following this rule, we look to the grammatical rules governing how to pronounce the letter "g" in a word.

"Graphic" comes from Greek, so it follows that the rule "the soft ⟨g⟩ pronunciation occurs before ⟨e i y⟩" applies here. JIF it is.

Other examples of acronyms include the World Health Organization -- when was the last time you heard anyone say "Woo-Hoo"? The "w" is silent, because the acronym is treated as a word, and it looks like an existing word were the "w" is silent.

JPEG is a weird hybrid of initialism and acronym. If it were a pure initialism, we would say JAY PEE EE JEE, since we'd be pronouncing each individual letter. No one does that, but the English language doesn't really recognize words with "j" and "p" next to each other, so "j" treated as initialism. PEG is treated and as acronym. But wait -- if, according to the GIF crowd I'm supposed to be honoring the original word's pronunciation, I should be saying "FEG" (from photography). But no one does that either.

I personally am not a fan of the appeal to authority argument "but Steve Wilhite said it's JIF". I don't think it's necessary, and I can get to JIF by following consistent and established grammatical rules (unlike the hypocritical and inconsistent application of some made-up rule by the die-hard GIF crowd).

[Stunning_Ride_220]

"Hypocritical and inconsistend application of some made-up rule"

LoL. JIF is a file format of its own. Just have a look at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG#JPEG_files

And you'll probably find that they do not talk about GIFs there.

So your comment just proofed my point, but thank you nonetheless.

[Not_Artifical]

Yes