Arguments at the Christmas dinner table!

[Thekwango]

You're wrong.

indeed. 46 years on this planet and i've always believed that to be an acronym the letters actually had to be pronounced as a word rather than just saying the letters. were he still alive i think i'd be having a few choice words with my GCSE English teacher

 

[Flibster]

It's GIF

Graphics has a hard G, as such so does the acronym.

 

[FoxEye]

It's GIF

Graphics has a hard G, as such so does the acronym.

Doesn't matter.

Let's say I create the acronym "PAL" for the Philosophical Arguments Lobby in our building.

You going to pronounce that as "PHAL"? I doubt it very much.

 

[touch]

Let's say I create the acronym "PAL" for the Philosophical Arguments Lobby in our building.

More importantly, how do you pronounce their messaging system? It's the Philosophical Arguments Lobby Internal Communications Exchange

 

[J.D]

 

[ivrytwr3]

It's pronounced Jif, some random fact i picked up years ago - although i, and the rest of the world, say Gif.

https://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/22/tech/web/pronounce-gif/index.html

 

[Angilion]

English is not consistent with the way words are pronounced, probably due to all the external influences and etymology of individual words.

Giraffe, genome, gesture, etc, etc, etc. All soft g sounds. Countless others.

So why is there only one possibility for "gif" ?

As I said before (and you quoted):

[..] 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. [..]

You're free to argue that everyone is wrong and GIF should be pronounced the same as Jif, the brand of peanut butter. Which was what the inventor of the format intended - he named the format after the brand of peanut butter but spelled it incorrectly to avoid copyright issues. But English doesn't work by an individual's decree.

 

[Mellowfellow]

Just thought of this reading the above thread
Reverend Lovejoy: Ned, Maude, what brings you here?
Ned: Well... sometimes God bless her, she underlines passages in my bible because she can't find hers!
Homer: Oh, lucky you don't keep guns in the house.

 

[robj20]

Reminds me so much of this.

 

[MoNkeE]

It’s like Sean Bean. Surely you have to be Seen Been or Shaun Bhaun?!

 

[wolfie138]

Considering the G stands for Graphics, then only 1 way to pronounce it.

Ask them to buy you a Jraphics card for next Xmas

Jraphics Park.

 

[Von Luck]

It's pronounced Jif, some random fact i picked up years ago - although i, and the rest of the world, say Gif.

https://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/22/tech/web/pronounce-gif/index.html

If he wanted it said a certain way he should have included a pronunciation guide with it. Once you have a product that has been adopted worldwide, the correct pronunciation is the one used by the majority of people, which is hard G Gif. He's Canute trying to stop the tide.

 

[Lysander]

If he wanted it said a certain way he should have included a pronunciation guide with it. Once you have a product that has been adopted worldwide, the correct pronunciation is the one used by the majority of people, which is hard G Gif. He's Canute trying to stop the tide.

Precisely this.

One can say "it was originally pronounced Jif", but now it's "Gif". I have never heard anyone say "Jif".

 

[FoxEye]

You're all wrong. It's JIF.

 

[HangTime]

Yeah I say meme like you do, to rhyme with team.

I know one guy though who pronounces it as "mem", like in memory. WTAF...!

I didn't know how it was pronounced for years, because it wasn't really used until I was an adult and it isn't the sort of word that gets used in spoken adult conversation, it's almost exclusively read on the internet.

 

[Feek]

Where's Jilly when we need him

 

[Puzzled]

It's pronounced Jeff, my mate Jif told me.

 

[FoxEye]

Where's Jilly when we need him

I'm sure he's having a Golly old time, wherever he is

 

[Ahleckz]

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

Some (idiots) pronounce J as “Jai” rather than “Jay”. It makes the abc song sound utterly ridiculous but they are, as mentioned, idiots.

 

[builder22]

That’s def a Glasgow thing, there was a guy with the initials JT at a place I worked near Glasgow, everyone called him Jai Tee, even though I say jay I had to call him Jai Tee