Poll: "Giff" or "Jif"? | Hacker News Reader

Poll: "Giff" or "Jif"?

19 pointstokenizer64 comments

How do you pronounce it?

I've pronounced it like JIF since the mid-90's when I first learned of GIFs. I've had to send many people here to prove I wasn't crazy: http://www.olsenhome.com/gif/

Thank you. I had no idea that PNG was supposed to be pronounced "Ping" (I always say Pee Enn Gee)

QT should be pronounced "cute", but I say "queue-tee".

Linux is pronounced with a short i, but most americans say "lie-nux". As a german I say "Lee-nux".

Xing is allegedly pronounced "crossing", but I say "ksing".

Also surprised at the number of people who call nginx "en jinx" instead of "engine x"

It really surprises you that names based on cute misspellings that are effectively unpronouncable when taken at face value get pronounced differently by different people?

If Syosev wanted people to pronounce it "engine x", he should have called it "engine x".

> Xing is allegedly pronounced "crossing", but I say "ksing".

Got any info on this? I've heard this only several times (i.e. rarely). Always from people who are used to the "crossing" signs, but never from anybody else.

> QT should be pronounced "cute", but I say "queue-tee".

I think we would say "queue-tee" if it was QT instead of Qt. To me, "cute" makes more sense for "Qt".

Really? I have always though it is a mashup of "Linus Torvalds Unix Clone" so always used the long 'i' the same as his name.

Here's a video of Linus pronouncing his name and Linux (sorry, it kind of cuts out at the end, but you can get the gist):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IfHm6R5le0

I'm an American and I catch hell from other Americans when I say "lie-nux." Considering we pronounce Linus as "lie-nus" I really don't see the issue. The recordings of Linus pronouncing it in two non-English languages have a subtle "ee" in there and I don't expect my peers to say "leenux" - they'll drop to the short "ih" sound.

There are a lot of examples in linguistics where the "correct" pronunciation of a word is not the common pronunciation, and so the common pronunciation becomes the correct one.

I've heard maybe one in every twenty people pronunce it as "jif", and when they do so it's not because it seems like it's the natural pronunciation, it's because they once read it was the correct was to pronounce it and want to hammer that fact home.

So I'm sticking with the hard g version.

I mean, I can only speak from personal experience, but I always call gif, jif, and it has nothing to do with whether its correct pronunciation or not. I just read it like that and could care less about the facts

> could care less

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw

To be fair he's posting about it on an internet forum so he probably _could_ care less.

Both are from a linguistic perspective obviously correct since 'native' speakers use both pronunciations.

Linguistics isn't prescriptive in that way, you cannot use it to say that a minority is pronouncing something wrong.

Doesn't the G stand for Graphics? That has a hard G, so I pronounce GIF with one too.

Do you say 'mie·elf' too?

In considering the alternative, I found myself saying "Giraffe-ics" and giggled.

"They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.": http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/an-honor-for-the-cr...

Most linguists would agree that it is logically contradictory to state that the majority of speakers pronounce a word incorrectly, because the correct pronunciation is determined by observing how people actually say a word, and not how one very special person thinks other people should pronounce it.

Isn't prescriptivism vs. descriptivism actually a very old divide among linguists?

It is a very old divide, and the descriptivists won a very long time ago. I'm sure there are prescriptivist linguists around somewhere but I haven't met them.

I worked at CompuServe in the 90s and it was only ever referred to as "Giff"

JIF is already taken by JPEG[0], so GIF, with a hard G.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_Interchange_Format#JPEG_fi...

I think GIF came before JPEG.

In France, G and J have the opposite sound: J sounds like G, and G like J. Makes sense? ;-)

As such, everybody pronounces it "JIF" here. And it seems to go in the author's direction, so it's fine.

Is that "JIF" meant to be pronounced in English or French, then? ;)

"jee-f" :)

I'm French and I never heard someone pronouncing it "JIF".

Well then I guess even us do have different pronunciations. I'm from Lyon and everyone I know, be it friends, family or colleagues, say "jee-f".

This question always reminded me of the discussion we used to have in the early Quake scene; hard G or J for the word gib. Hard G always made more sense to me, but then I heard someone from id software explain that it should be a J, since the root of the word was "giblets".

Even knowing I'm not saying it the same was as the person who coined the phrase couldn't make me change. hard G gib just sounded more correct!

In Japan, I never met the people pronounce it "Giff". Always we call it「ジフ」"Jif". Some pronounce git as "jit". Because we pronounce "G" as "Jee".

Is "git" katakanized? 「ギット」かも?

> Because we pronounce "G" as "Jee".

So do the English and Americans, yet they mostly seem to prefer the hard g.

Maybe ギフ never caught on becuase it would cause confusion with "give" as well as 岐阜市

Who the fuck cares.

Jif? i had no idea people pronounce it like that.

Yeah, the creator has recently come out and has said that that is the correct pronunciation.

Link: http://metro.co.uk/2013/05/22/twitter-in-uproar-as-gif-creat...

Alistair Coleman added: ‘[Creator] of the Gif says it’s pronounced “jif”. Why didn’t he say so earlier, the gerk?’

So lots of us are pronouncing it wrong. Will anyone make an effort to change? I know I won't.

Maybe its like one of those cola vs. soda vs. pop things that is based on geography ... http://quittingsoda.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/popvssoda...

I'm only 23 years old, and I hail from the East Coast of Canada. I've never heard anyone pronounce it "Jif", but I had read on reddit that some people have had the opposite experience, never hearing the "Giff" pronunciation.

I only know one guy who says giff. I've always said jif, and frankly probably the rest of my circles were influenced by my pronunciation until lately.

The giff guy won't budge.

If you have to pronounce it, you're working the Internet wrong...

Meatspace.

In real life, it's just an animated image, format doesn't matter...

Jif, like this file loads in a jif compared to a bitmap.

Like "gift" w/o "t".

For me it has always been Jee Eye Ef. No confusion.

Another one is Asus. I always thought it was "A-sys". Turns out it's "Uh-seuss" like Dr. Seuss, with the accent over the last syllable.

I'm in the "jif" crowd. This means that I always want to pronounce "git" as in "Github" with a soft g, which is wrong.

He finally got the courage to speak up. 26 years later. That's a geek for you. But thanks for the Gif!

If the inventor pronounces it jif then it is pronounced jif, case closed.

Graphic Interchange Format

Grrh Ih Foh

ggggiiihhhhfffffff

Gif

gif

because of "jif", I thought that "gift" is pronounced as "jift" (that was not so long ago :)

How about: "gitt" vs. "jit"

The former of course. Because Linus is a git :)

Though my French boss goes for the latter, but with a very soft J. In fact, he pronounces it like 'Gîte'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gîte for the pronunciation guide.

choosy websites choose gif.

Jif FTW

PNG (;

Giff

Well, if this is pronoucned "jif" then that means it's also "rejex". And what kind of world is that.

It means nothing of the sort. World order restored.

I say "giff" and "rej-ex". Do I lose Internet points?

How would you pronounce gin?

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