Arguments at the Christmas dinner table!

Smeghead said:
If the inventor of said thing categorically says it's pronounced one way, then how hard is it to pronounce it that way?

Like, isn't it just common decency to pronounce something or someone's name correctly? It's like if someone told you their name was Dave, and you just ignored them and called them "Dah-vay". Outside of literal difficulties with certain mouth shapes and sounds that aren't common in your mother tongue, then as (hopefully) a self-respecting adult, the amount of effort it should take to pronounce something properly should be small, especially for a barely-one-syllable word.
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I think there's a relevant distinction between a person's name and a thing in public use. If the inventor of a thing that becomes something public and widely used wants to spell it incorrectly for the pronunciation they prefer, hard luck on them. And in English, 'gif' would be pronounced with a hard 'g' and not a soft 'g' or an English 'j'. Why? Because it is. That's how English works - slopped together over time by common usage. It doesn't even vary by dialect - 'gif' is a hard 'g' in any English dialect. The inventor could pronounce it "wibblebob" if they like, but nobody else has to. They made it public. It's not personal to them any more. They wanted to name it after a brand of peanut butter for some reason (I don't care why) and spelt it incorrectly to avoid possible lawsuits from the manufacturer of that peanut butter. Not my problem. They should have come to some agreement with the manufacturer of the peanut butter if they wanted to use the peanut butter brand name for their graphics format.

But I also don't much care regarding personal names. My RL name is sometimes pronounced incorrectly by people who aren't native English speakers (and at least 1 person who is). I've no doubt they could pronounce it correctly if I told them the correct pronunciation and they tried, but why should I care? They're not intending any insult.

I'm reminded of the arguing over the correct pronunciation of 'Jaguar'. Neither the English English nor the American English pronunciations are correct because it's not an English word (it's from one of the languages in South America - I forget which) and the rules of pronunciation are different. Most obviously, the English 'j' sound doesn't even exist in that language so any English pronunciation is wrong right away, from the first letter. Or all pronunciations are right because that's how languages work. Similarly for the long 'a' that exists in some dialects of English and not in others, with 'bath' being probably the best known example. Etc, etc.
 
Unsurprisingly it is COVID this time around - one of my relatives is vehement that it is just the same cold virus which has always been going around, that no one is actually dying from it - the deaths are misclassified flu while in the same breath claiming that the number of people dying from it is far less than flu. That masks and lockdowns do absolutely nothing and that the vaccines are the solution and that if everyone just got boosted the virus would vanish. And getting extremely heated with anyone who has an opinion otherwise.
 
Von Luck said:
The creators wanted it pronounced Jif, but they're wrong and it's Gif, anyone who disagrees is weird.
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this.... you can't change the sound of a letter after thousands of years.....

it's GIF like GIFT without the T...

JPEG as in J-Peg..... anything else is just wrong
UI as in "U I" any moron saying yuey like huey is a moron fact


you don't pronounce AI like aye or aiii do you .....

it's simple logic.... letters have certain sounds

NIKE is NIKE there's no Y on the end regardless of what they say......

IKEA I-key-A as in I key A car in the car park... I think it was yours
 
uber soldat said:
It's meant to be pronounced Jif, but no-one does.
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I've always pronounced it "jif". Not because I ever knew that was correct or not, it's just the way I chose to pronounce it from the first time I knew it was a thing.

But then I'm weird as you all know.
 
arknor said:
it's like you deciding

SixTwoSix is actually pronounced Seven Four Seven then expecting everyone to go along with your delusion.... :p
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Decided to google it, seems it is pronounced with a 'meh' at the end instead of 'may' - i'll still carry on saying it wrong though :D
 
SixTwoSix said:
Decided to google it, seems it is pronounced with a 'meh' at the end instead of 'may' - i'll still carry on saying it wrong though :D
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I think it's geeks trying to be edgy and cool cos it's probably how it's pronounced when it's spelt in Japanese characters.... they have different sounds to English letters though
 
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