Father of GIFs: 'It's Pronounced JIF' | Hacker News Reader

Father of GIFs: 'It's Pronounced JIF'

mashable.com

36 pointsvanni66 comments

Words change. That's how language works.

Society agrees it's pronounced "gif", it's pronounced "gif".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_linguistics

^he speaks the truth. Although I think this is a fair last-ditch effort to revert back to the original intended pronunciation.

There are many who have always pronounced it 'jif'. I thought it was strange when I first learned that there are people who say 'gif' with a 'G' sound.

Words can have many pronunciations. This one has two, as evidenced by the fact that we are even discussing it.

The hard G pronunciation probably comes from its similar spelling to the word "gift."

Also, the G in GIF stands for "Graphics", which has a hard G sound.

This has always been my thought on the matter. I am surprised there's a controversy. The only times I've heard it pronounced 'jif' is by people unsure of the pronunciation and quickly corrected.

It will be curious to see what society agrees upon then.

How embarassing for him, he doesn't even know how to pronounce his own technology.

I wasn't even aware that this was up for debate. I've pronounced it with a "j" since I had a 1200 baud modem dialing up to BBS's. That's just...how it's pronounced.

I wasn't even aware that this was up for debate. I've pronounced it with a "g" since I had an IMP dialing up to Arpanet. That's just...how it's pronounced.

Every time I got sad that my DecWriter II couldn't display them, I screamed "Curse you GIF!" with a G sound.

Sorry, after 25 years of pronouncing it the way it's spelt, "GIF" is too ingrained - I simply cannot pronounce it any other way.

I don't know why, but I've always said 'jif'. 'gif' sounds so wrong to me.

Same with Quake players saying 'gibbed' instead of 'jibbed'. The 'G' sounds makes me throw up a little.

There was a brand of kitchen cleaner marketed in my country as Jif, since renamed Cif. I think most people in the UK favour the hard G for the file format, because invoking images of kitchen cleaner when you're discussing image files is just a distraction :-)

Good point. In the US we have Jif peanut butter. That's where the name comes from. The slogan was "Choosy moms choose Jif."

And so the .gif slogan is "Choosy developers choose Gif."

oh, Cif is an english name? How do you pronounce that ?

I am under the impression there aren't many words starting with "ci" in english but I think they mostly sound like "see" (e.g. circuit).

Of course, for me it's pronounced as "cheef", which goes perfectly with "jeef" :)

No, I think it's a 'European' name: I.e. it was branded Cif across Europe, and only Jif in Britain, until recently. I'm not sure of the specific origin of the name; either way, it's pronounced the same way as the start of the word "sit"

It will forever be a hard "G" sound regardless of what the author intended.

"I'd like a gin and tonic."

"It's pronounced 'jin'."

"WHAT?! I DON'T CARE! I'LL DO WHAT I WANT!"

(If people were irrational about a similar word's pronunciation.)

That's one way to look at it... another is that "gin" is a word, and "GIF" is an acronym. If you want to pronounce it, it's "jee eye eff."

This, of course, is from someone in the unapologetic hard-g camp. :)

Acronyms don't strictly take on the pronunciation of their constructive words. SCUBA, POTUS, NASA, etc. all deviate from the phonetics of the words used to construct the acronym.

People pronounce POTUS?

Yes, for some reason folks get so upset at me when I tell them 'jif' is the author-intended pronunciation.

GIF is an acronym. GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format. The word graphics starts with a "g" that sounds like gurgle, good, golf, gallbladder, gun, grapes, etc... NOT giraffe. Thus, it should be pronounce "giff". The inventor of GIF made a format, but he didn't invent acronyms. Pronouncing it like "jiff" would be like pronouncing GIF like "fignewtons". It doesn't make sense.

Giff4life.

As stated elsewhere...

Acronyms don't strictly take on the pronunciation of their constructive words. SCUBA, POTUS, NASA, etc. all deviate from the phonetics of the words used to construct the acronym.

Why do people take this so personally?

> Why do people take this so personally?

This is not really about an image format. Linguistic prescriptivism is the real issue.

In this case, though, the two pronunciations are roughly half-and-half anyway, so a little nudge from authority might actually make a difference...

[Of course in reality, the format will probably become irrelevant, and the word forgotten, before there's any consensus on the pronunication... ^^; ]

Or people could just say "Oh, I was wrong" and adjust...

> wrong

They are only "wrong" if you subscribe to prescriptivism... The issue, and the objections being raised by many, are not limited to this particular word. Did you read my post? it was not long.

This is a simple one: if he wanted it pronounced 'JIF', he shouldn't have spelled it GIF.

Or called it the Jraffics Interchange File.

Or Giraffeics, that would work too.

He should have called it .jif then

captainhindsight.jpeg

Jraphics?

Pronunciation of words I nearly exclusively see in print is a big frustration of mine.

I remember a decade ago trying to figure out if Linux was pronounced "Lih-nux" or "Lye-nux". I had originally assumed it was the latter because of the way I assume Linus Torvalds pronounces his name (I'm not so clear on that even), but found a write-up on the web where he cleared it up (and don't even get me started on Guh-New-Slash-Lih-Nux). Then lets go for SQL (es-queue-ell or sequel?), SCSI (very few would have guessed "scuzzy" if they hadn't already heard someone say it), my personal favorite "PWN" (I'm still not clear on that).

I'm a non-JIF GIF pronouncer. I know how it's supposed to be pronounced, but it had been part of my vocabulary for almost a decade before I discovered the right pronunciation. And in North America, JIF is a very well advertised brand of peanut-butter.

     Person A: Can you send me that JIF?
     Person B: Sure (heads to fridge)

I doubt I will ever say this (or even want to say this) correctly.

The parallels with "gigga" vs "jigga" (for the pronunciation of the metric prefix) are striking. I've met a couple of people recently who weren't even aware of the 2nd pronunciation, and a lot of the people who are don't realize that both pronunciations are accepted.

Wait, so Doc Brown's 1.28 jigawatts is legit?

Yeah, it's an option. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/giga-

Not only that, there's evidence that it might have been the more common pronunciation at the time!

Off topic, but 5 words? I know external constraints force creativity and all that, but there's just not that much one can actually say in 5 words. Besides, wouldn't 130 characters (~20 english words) have been more in keeping with the spirit of the evening?

I realize it's a joke (or I hope so) but it's really not up to him to decide. Language is one of the most democratic things we know, without totalitarian oppression, you can't really change the pronunciation of a word.

It's more like the father of his kid telling you that you're pronouncing the kid's name wrong. This word is only 25 years old, not centuries.

The age hardly matters, language works fast. And this is not some relative mispronouncing it, this is millions of people using a pronunciation that makes more sense etymologically.

Some discussion from a larger story earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5748439

jrafics interchange format

I hope he pronounces everything like the Saxons would have since, apparently, the rabble isn't allowed to change language.

well, I always pronounced like that, yay :)

Me too! Well... it's because we are Italians, so the "JIF" pronunciation sounds much more natural to us.

Me too (as a french speaker)

Offtopic but kinda related. Father of the "Dothraki", the language used on game of thrones says you're all pronouncing Khaleesi WRONG http://io9.com/youre-all-pronouncing-khaleesi-wrong-47877979...

More of an absentee father if you ask me, which means he shouldn't be involved in how the baby is named.

hmm defacto vs dejure if you ask me

Anyone who corrects me on how I pronounce GIF is just as much a pompous jack ass as the person that would correct me on how I pronounce tomato, potato, schedule, apricot or pecan.

I neither get the insistence it is pronounced one way or the other, nor the insistence that one will not change how they pronounce it, for any word.

This "jif" illustrates my feelings towards that pronounciation: http://gph.is/XJQ7rp

Let's agree to disagree and move the fuck on.

No, it's pronounced /d͡ʒɪf/.

That's not how language works. Things are pronounced how they are.

uh, no, it's really not.

Of course it is. This was never really debatable.

I always pronounce it "Jee Eye Ef."

Maybe I'm just weird that way.

Similarly, I refuse to pronounce "PNG" as anything other than "Pee En Gee".

Justice served! Finally!

who gives a shit

it's true, it is pronounced jif. it's also pronounced gif.

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