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Comment by alexfromapex | Hacker News Reader

Anyone who says gif must also maintain consistency when saying giraffe. Otherwise, you are living too dangerously for me.

Edit: I think a lot of people thought I was serious. Just joking around.

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There is no sense in which English pronunciation can be described as "consistent." As supporting evidence, may I introduce the poem "The Chaos":

https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html

As a non-native speaker who mostly reads English, this makes me very worried about my pronunciation.

The P in JPEG stands for "photo." You don't pronounce it "jpheg." English isn't a consistent language, and to try to apply consistent pronunciation is a failure in abstract thinking.

You've made a giant gaffe.

I know you were joking. My favorite example is

   ghoti

"gh" from laugh, "o" from "women", "ti" from "tion" (like nation")

so "ghoti" can be pronounced the same as "fish"

I will go ahead and note that such a construction violates a ton of pronunciation rules. Yes english has those.

gin, gift, giraffe, giggle

git

I frequently work with some people in Argentina and they pronounce git as an English speaker might say “jit”

We never discus image formats tho. I’ll have to ask them about GIF next time.

The English call the Thames river Tims. Spanish call Barcelona Barthelona, and Ibiza Ibitha. So I don't put much in native pronounciations. Otherwise, if they are pronouncing it correctly, they need to go back to spelling skool!!

Don't get me started on Stuyvesant! ;-)

/s in case it's not obvious

So how do you pronounce "gill"?

The unit of measure? "Jill".

> The unit of measure?

You wouldn't think "the breathing apparatus of a fish" before "the unit of measure"? When was the last time you saw something measured in gills?

When I lived in Scotland around 25 years ago, many bars in the Highlands advertised the size of their whiskey measures in terms of gills (and I was laughed at for mispronouncing the term!). I'm not sure if it's still common. So for me, it does actually come to mind at least as readily as fish anatomy.

Jill, obviously. /s

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