I’ve had similar arguments with people over the pronunciation of Linux, with one person saying it’s “Lie-nicks” because it’s named after “Linus”, but Linus himself has said he pronounces his own name differently depending on the language he’s speaking at the time, but Linux is always pronounced “Lynn-icks.”
At this point GIFs in their original form as .GIF files barely exist anymore. GIF basically just means “short clip”. Why would the author get any say at all at that point?
We speak the language and pronounce new words based on the past words of the language. There are exceptions but they don’t negate the defaults.
Nearly every single word in English that starts with a g followed by a soft ih/eh vowel is pronounced as a soft g, just a few:
gin gypsy general gerund Gerald gel gem gyp Geronimo gesture
In fact, there are something like 20,000 words in the dictionary that start with G and the number of them that are pronounced with a hard G where this rule otherwise dictates a soft G is such a small fraction of them that it has its own wiki page.
This video is a tad harsh for comedic effort, but otherwise entirely fact based and sourced:
Bottom line: you’re free to use a hard G, but it’s not the default pronunciation based on either all other English words or the creator’s intentions, and if you’re confused why others pronounce it with a soft G, they would seem to be simply more familiar with the English language 🤷♂️
Nearly every single word in English that starts with a g followed by a soft ih/eh vowel is pronounced as a soft g, just a few:
That is patently not true and blatant cherry picking, e.g. already contradicted by the lexically matching word “gift” (and there are “giggle”, “gild”, “girl”, “git”, “give”, “gizmo”, etc.). See Wikipedia, which referenced linguists studying this:
An analysis of 269 words by linguist Michael Dow found near-tied results on whether a hard or soft g was more appropriate based on other English words; the results varied somewhat depending on what parameters were used.[11] Of the 105 words that contained gi somewhere in the word, 68 used the soft g while only 37 employed its counterpart. However, the hard g words were found to be significantly more common in everyday English; […]
All you basically said is “nuh uh because my feelings” and then an appeal to authority who disregarded the following vowel sound. “But he’s a professor” proves nothing, let alone backs any sort of assertion that you or he are familiar with squat 🤷♂️
Gerry the gentle giraffe went to the gym with the generous gem of a gymnast Geoffrey (the giant ginger who wears gentlemen’s hair gel and studies geometry). Genius!
People are so weird about this. Yes, G’s often sound like J’s English is weird. The inventor gets to have the say, he called it “jif”, great, it’s “jif”. To say it hard g “gif” and act like all G’s sound the same is just announcing one’s own ignorance. Weird take. Welcome to English!
English is filled with weird duplicative shit. Ex: Why do we even have C’s anyway if we could use an S or a K? “Accident” one C is “kuh” and one C is “Suh”. WTF English?
The inventor can call it whatever he wants, but it’s not going to change the pronunciation that has stuck with the general public. Language isn’t some decided upon thing that one person gets to control, it is a tool that naturally evolves and changes over time as it spreads from person to person
What general public? I’ve heard it pronounced both ways often by many people. There is no agreed way to pronounce it. Even the dictionary recognizes both ways. www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/GIF
so you agree then that one person doesn’t get to decide what the pronunciation is, and there is no “official” way to say it (although, the majority of people use the hard g - source)
This is actually an issue that should be solved at the English level. All words starting with a ‘g’ that are pronounced ‘j’ should be written with a ‘j’.
English has been the total outlier among (originally) European language with no body of authority over its spelling. Even the “reform” by Noah Webster never really caught on outside North America, nearly 100 years later. And even more curious, the somewhat authoritative Oxford English Dictionary disagrees in their spelling with everybody (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling).
Even though I pronounce it “jif” too, I am tired of seeing arguments that rely on how other words are pronounced. You are not helping the cause, as these arguments are too easily countered. There are much more convincing arguments to be made, such as how “jif” is more practical since it can’t be confused with “gift,” and how the creator was making a reference to the word “jiffy.”
I’d rather be in the majority saying it wrong then the minority saying it right.
Because at the end of the day the way you pronounce words is a very social thing, and no matter what is technically right or wrong, it’s going to benefit you to say it in the way everyone else does.
I dont know why you believe thats how language works, its not. Everyone in Texas pronouncing “nuclear” “nukular” instead of “noo-clee-ar” doesn’t make it correct. It still comes from the root word “nucleus”, not “nukulus”. The majority are objectively wrong, and there are no arguments to be made to the contrary.
If you want to be wrong on purpose, go for it, just stop pretending otherwise. You’re embarrassing yourself and all English speakers.
I used to be adament about gif with a hard G until I had a coworker insist that sudo was pronounced soodoo rather than pseudo. like yeah, I know it stands for sUpEr uSeR dO but you can never get me to not say it the other way.
In my head I thought of it like a psuedo su and thought sudo was clever, then learning it is like soodoo and I’m highly disappointed. I still say it like psuedo in my head. I use arch btw.
