> One final note: according to Wilhite, GIF is pronounced with a soft “G,” like “jif.” That settles the never-ending debate for me.
Now all he's done is make 1/2 of the population immediately discount everything else he said, regardless of its merit.
That would be correct if GIF stood for "Gerbil Interchange Format" rather than "Graphics Interchange Format".
Funnily enough, in Spanish "gi" is pronounced "ji" as in "Girar" (pronounced Jirar), while "gui" is pronounced like "gi" and "güi" is pronounced "gu-i". But "GIF" in Spanish is still pronounced with a soft "g", contradicting the general rule.
Edit: wait Google Translate says those are pronounced that way? https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=en&t...
From the limited Spanish experience I have (a few years in middle school and high school), I was aware of the subtleties of how "g" is pronounced with relation to the following vowel, but I didn't know about how "GIF" was pronounced! It fits what I remember about loan words though; I think we had the word "hockey" as a vocab word once during a unit where we had all sports words, and we were taught that it was pronounced the same way as in English, which stuck out to me given that "ho" at the beginning of a word in Spanish would usually not have an "h" sound like in English. Of course, "ck" is basically never found in real Spanish words either; from what I recall, "k" isn't really used much at all besides in loan words!
Exactly like the well known Joint Potatographic Experts Group, yeah? I guess it's time to start saying JayFeg.
I added the "for me" to try to convey that it's a personal choice. I don't care what pronunciation others use.
In this case, it doesn't bother me if someone chooses to discount what I wrote just because of that statement. That's on them.
I know it doesn't add much to the post. I just really liked the video of him accepting the Webby award. It was nice to see the person behind the technology, and I like letting creators decide things like pronunciation and casing. For example, I always make sure I spell "GitHub" instead of "Github" for no reason other than that's how they spell it themselves.
Whatever way you pronounce it, the important thing is to realize that videos have advantages over gifs that you should always keep in mind - which came through loud and clear.
In this case, english rules dictate that any word that starts with "gif" is a hard g sound. You will not find an english word that starts with "gif" with a soft g.
The only reason there is a controversy at all is because the creator insists on his incorrect pronunciation with a soft g. If he wanted a soft g, it should have been a "jif".
English rules tell you how to pronounce "gi" at the start of a word, and the "f" doesn't change it.
Girl. Giraffe. Giddy. Gin. It can go either way.
Those aren't mutually exclusive.
>You will not find an english word that starts with "gif" with a soft g.
If I was going to make a post with an assertion like this, I'd pick up a dictionary.