What's The Correct Way to Pronounce 'GIF'? (thenewstack.io) 453
"Apparently we're all fighting about how to pronounce 'GIF' again on Twitter," writes technology columnist Mike Melanson:
I personally find the argument of web designer Aaron Bazinet, who managed to secure the domain howtoreallypronouncegif.com, rather convincing in its simplicity: "It's the most natural, logical way to pronounce it. That's why when everyone comes across the word for the first time, they use a hard G [as in "gift"]." Bazinet relates the origin of the debate as such:
"The creator of the GIF image format, Steve Wilhite of CompuServe, when deciding on the pronunciation, said he deliberately chose to echo the American peanut butter brand, Jif, and CompuServe employees would often say 'Choosy developers choose GIF(jif)', playing off of Jif's television commercials. If you hear anyone pronounce GIF with a soft G, it's because they know something of this history."
Wilhite attempted to settled the controversy in 2013 when accepting a lifetime achievement award at the 17th annual Webby awards. Using an actual animated .gif for his five-word acceptance speech, he authoritatively announced his preferred pronounciation. However, the chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary argues that "A coiner effectively loses control of a word once it's out there," adding that "the pronunciation with a hard g is now very widespread and readily understood."
One linguist addressed the topic on Twitter this week, noting studies that found past usage of "gi" in words has been almost evenly split between hard and soft g sounds. Their thread also answers a related question: how will I weaponize a trivial and harmless consonant difference to make other people feel bad and self-conscious about themselves?
Her response? "Maybe just....don't do this."
"The creator of the GIF image format, Steve Wilhite of CompuServe, when deciding on the pronunciation, said he deliberately chose to echo the American peanut butter brand, Jif, and CompuServe employees would often say 'Choosy developers choose GIF(jif)', playing off of Jif's television commercials. If you hear anyone pronounce GIF with a soft G, it's because they know something of this history."
Wilhite attempted to settled the controversy in 2013 when accepting a lifetime achievement award at the 17th annual Webby awards. Using an actual animated .gif for his five-word acceptance speech, he authoritatively announced his preferred pronounciation. However, the chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary argues that "A coiner effectively loses control of a word once it's out there," adding that "the pronunciation with a hard g is now very widespread and readily understood."
One linguist addressed the topic on Twitter this week, noting studies that found past usage of "gi" in words has been almost evenly split between hard and soft g sounds. Their thread also answers a related question: how will I weaponize a trivial and harmless consonant difference to make other people feel bad and self-conscious about themselves?
Her response? "Maybe just....don't do this."
Jif... (Score:4, Informative)
Because choosy nerds choose GIF!
For those overseas or under 30, it's a play on the old Choosy mothers choose Jif [dailymotion.com] peanut butter commercial
Re:Jif... (Score:4, Insightful)
The creator of the GIF image format, Steve Wilhite of CompuServe, when deciding on the pronunciation, said he deliberately chose to echo the American peanut butter brand, Jif,
So, he's a complete moron.
He created the acronym GIF, for Graphics Interchange Format.
The G is for Graphics, not Jraphics.
The G is for Graphics, not Jraphics.
There is no such word as Jraphics.
The G is for Graphics, not Jraphics.
There is no such word as Jraphics.
How do you create an acronym and then pronounce it wrong? That's just fucking retarded.
Re:Jif... (Score:5, Informative)
How do you create an acronym and then pronounce it wrong? That's just fucking retarded.
Oh really?
Pronounce Scuba for me.... now, pronounce each word the letters in Scuba stand for... Betcha you never pronounced it sc-uh-ba in your life.
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Or how about JPEG?
Every time I've heard someone say it out loud, it's jay-peg. Never once have I heard someone say jay-feg. Yet the P comes from "photograph", which means that, by the logic of the parent post, the P should sound like an F. We all have to pronounce JPEG as jay-feg.
Except that acronyms don't work that way.
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I'm pretty sure it isn't spelled "sos l'ea" in French.
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How do you create an acronym and then pronounce it wrong?
Maybe he didn't.
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Yeah, the moron who created a prolific graphics format. It wasn't a big deal when I read about it in 1990 so I really think the problem is today's morons who can't accept if you invent it you can pronounce the name any way you like.
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Definitely cemented his status for the rest of history, as a moron.
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Anybody can pronounce anything any way they like. That doesn't mean that if you create a data format that you get to determine what society will call it. That is just narcissism. People use his acronym; but choosing an acronym has nothing to do with how people will pronounce it. And if you try to play it like a game and get people to say something you think is funny, they'll usually choose something else.
Re: Jif... (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh. Somebody who thinks the way an acronym's letters are pronounced in their respective words has ANYTHING AT ALL to do with how the acronym should be pronounced... is calling somebody *else* a moron? Funny.
Once again, the ONLY points that have any relevance whatsoever are:
1. The person who invents a technology deserves the right to name it, and only a total asshole would ignore their wishes.
2. The Cabal has authorized me to reveal that, for as long as the GIF format has existed, pronouncing "gif" correctly -- i.e., like "gin", not like "git" -- has been one of the not-so-secret recognition codes by which people who have any clue about computer stuff identify each other.
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Huh. Somebody who thinks the way an acronym's letters are pronounced in their respective words has ANYTHING AT ALL to do with how the acronym should be pronounced... is calling somebody *else* a moron? Funny.
Once again, the ONLY points that have any relevance whatsoever are:
1. The person who invents a technology deserves the right to name it, and only a total asshole would ignore their wishes.
2. The Cabal has authorized me to reveal that, for as long as the GIF format has existed, pronouncing "gif" correctly -- i.e., like "gin", not like "git" -- has been one of the not-so-secret recognition codes by which people who have any clue about computer stuff identify each other.
And he sure exercised his right to name it, didn't he? He named it the "Graphics Interchange Format". Not JIF, not GIF. And I've known he pronounced it like JIF since I was a kid but still refuse to do so. Why would I bother to try and confuse people with a peanut butter brand? SO that I can be an elitist asshole? No, I think I'll pronounce it how it is spelled. You're welcome to think I am ignorant for doing so, I really don't care.
Re:Jif... (Score:5, Funny)
So, he's a complete moron.
I think you are jiving too much importance to this.
I don't jive a damn, my jirlfriend does not jive a damn, my dog does not jive a damn.
All words are made up, there is no one true way, it is just what most people think. We need to stop arjuing stupid stuff like this and jet a life instead.
Re:Jif... (Score:5, Informative)
How do you create an acronym and then pronounce it wrong?
How can you claim it's pronounced wrong? An acronym becomes a word in its own right, and much of English pronunciation is based on the characters around individual letters which ultimately means that acronyms often sound different than the words from which they are based.
Now excuse me while I go pour myself a glass of gin while I clean the kitchen with my jif.
You're doing it wrong (Score:2)
https://youtu.be/MSJaSS_Zj0Y [youtube.com]
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Keeps the toilet clean (Score:5, Funny)
Interestingly they tried to rename it "Cif" a few years ago but my family back in the UK still just calls it Jif so if the trend continues soon it won't matter what the first letter is, "?if" will always get pronounced "Jif".
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It was always called Cif in Europe, but when launched in UK, naming something that sounds like the colloquialism for a sexually transmitted disease wasn't thought to be a good idea.
Then, decades later, it was renamed Cif in line with Europe for the reason that it would cost less to print the labels. Seeing as each country had their primary language describing the product on the label anyway, this seemed incongruous.
Oh, and Vim is a cleaning product used for scouring pans.
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Because choosy nerds choose GIF!
For those overseas or under 30, it's a play on the old Choosy mothers choose Jif [dailymotion.com] peanut butter commercial
This got "+5 Informative" for parroting something in the summary? Sheesh.
PS: Does anybody still use GIF now that we have PNG?
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GIF is still useful if you need to easily have something animated since APNG support is spotty at best and tools to generate valid APNG are not as popular as tools to make animated GIFs.
Otherwise, JPEG, PNG and CSS are your best tools.
Re: Jif... (Score:5, Funny)
The American "peanut butter" is the same product. Before use for cleaning toilets, it is a white cream.
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How the fuck is converting a small 500KB MP4 to a fucking 5MB GIF "more efficient"?
Pronounced like the peanut butter most moms love (Score:2)
You don't call a JPEG a Jay-Pheg!!
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Easy, how do you pronounce JIF versus GIF, if you pronounce them the same, you probably have problem and are probably a Joat or is that Goat. Different ascents pronounce the same words differently, hence the recognisable accents. By the way, accurately, you are pronouncing it correctly if the person you are talking to understands what you are saying, if they do not and remember the intent is communicating with them, you are pronouncing incorrectly because they did not understand what you were trying to say,
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How very descent of you to say that.
Not true. People can correct for errors, but they're still errors. It's much harder work than listening to someone who doesn't need decoding.
This applies in writing too. The middle sentence of your post is a fucking train wreck.
Your advice on language usage ranks right up there with Stephen Haw
Re: Pronounced like the peanut butter most moms lo (Score:2)
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Well we are at it, we also need to resolve how to pronouce "lib", "bin", "char", and "vi".
"vi" is the worst. I have heard it pronounced "vee-eye", "vee", "vie" (like "pie"), and "six".
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Surely you jest. Everyone calls it "the six editor."
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Yap. It's the editor of the devil.
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Re:Pronounced like the peanut butter most moms lov (Score:5, Insightful)
That's easy. I pronounce it "vim".
Re:Pronounced like the peanut butter most moms lov (Score:4, Funny)
It is all connected. The "Jif" brand used to be called "Vim" in my country.
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Who cares now? (Score:2)
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Outside of being the best format to store a 1x1 pixel image (usually for spacing in websites, although now better to use CSS), there's no benefits that GIF has these days over PNG. This was a discussion for eons ago, not 2019.
Please post a link to an animated .png
Re:Who cares now? (Score:5, Informative)
Please post a link to an animated .png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APNG [wikipedia.org]
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Ooooh, sick burn!
But I have to admit I have never seen a real animated PNG in the wild and I've been here for 30+ years.
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Same here.
Oh I'm sure they exist, but I've pawed through a ton of HTML and the only one I've ever seen is on the wikipedia page.
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That's because, as the wikipedia page says, it's not supported by Microsoft IE/Edge. In a few years when pre-chromium Edge is nearly extinct you'll start to see a lot more animated PNGs used.
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I think they are reasonably common in Android.
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Well, GIF has the benefit of having an intuitive pronunciation (well, two it seems) while PNG doesn't.
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I'm the opposite (Score:2)
If CompuServe says it's "jiff", that just reinforces my belief that the hard g is the way to go.
Re:"Jif", like the peanut butter (Score:4, Interesting)
I made up my mind a long time ago, in 1989. At the time, I barely spoke any English, but half my textbooks were in it. I had two professors who pronounced GIF differently. I just went with the pronunciation of the guy whom I liked more. Namely, hard G.
As an aside, most of the people whom I've met since pronounce it with a hard G, and know, just as well as I do, that the inventor recommends a soft sound.
It does not matter to me. I have yet to meet someone who insists on the soft G, and is not a pretentious wanker. I have never met someone who insists on the hard G. I would guess he would be a pretentious, ignorant wanker. The rest of us use the one we prefer, and know perfectly well what the people who use the other one mean.
Seriously, correcting people on their pronunciation? Do men do that to each other? My girlfriends used to do it, now my wife and my daughter are the only ones who offer unsolicited advice... yeah, my three year old daughter gives me crap about sometimes messing up the TH sound. She can't pronounce the R in three, but she can tell I can't get the TH right. :-)
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See attached reference: https://i.imgur.com/RRKVYQs.jp... [imgur.com]
Re:"Jif", like the peanut butter (Score:5, Informative)
English is defined, not by the originators of words, or an Academy, but by usage. English dictionaries do not define words, they document them.
If a hard g is the way it is commonly pronounced, that's the correct way.
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English dictionaries do not define words, they document them.
In all fairness, they do both.
Due to the nature of language though, the pronunciation and definition can be moving targets.
Oh, for mod points (Score:3)
Wish we could downmod the article as Troll.
Re:Oh, for mod points (Score:4, Insightful)
Wish we could downmod the article as Troll.
Mentioning or discussing something controversial and/or different from one's opinion is not (necessarily) trolling. /. moderators would learn this.)
(I wish some
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Mentioning or discussing something controversial and/or different from one's opinion is not (necessarily) trolling.
(I wish some /. moderators would learn this.)
While I agree with your point, I don’t see the relevance here. I didn’t even read past the headline before posting, so I have no idea if they agreed or disagreed with my opinion on the subject. It’s still trolling to beat this dead horse on /. in a summary.
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Soft g is just wrong. (Score:2, Insightful)
When it stands for Jraphics Interchange Format I'll pronounce it with a soft g.
Better question (Score:3, Informative)
Instead of wondering how to pronounce it, we should be asking "who gives a shit?" This argument was all the rage in the BBS days, in 1989. Today, nobody uses gifs so who gives a shit?
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Instead of wondering how to pronounce it, we should be asking "who gives a shit?" This argument was all the rage in the BBS days, in 1989.
Exactly! We need to be asking the tough modern day questions that really matter to everyone like, "is it better to use Vi or Emacs?" ;)
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Depends on how you look at it. It stores 256-color images losslessly. :)
P.S. I always wondered why, since GIF allows multiple images per file (cf. animation frames) why not use them to store 32-bit images by incorporating four 8-bit images for the RGBA channels?
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http://web.archive.org/web/200... [archive.org]
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Others and I still use old school GIFs!
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I can attest that yes, in Ye Olde Days of the BBS it was indeed pronounced with a soft "g".
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Yes, but is 'png' pronounced like 'ping' or like 'pee enn gee' or maybe "puh-naJ"?
Ping (Score:2)
As the other commenters say, even for animations and fixed palette images there are better, open options.
Meh (Score:3)
I'm an old nerd and I always said hard g gif.
That said, I really don't give a rip. Use PNGs (pings BTW, not puhnugs) and be done with it.
It's only fair, traditionally (Score:2, Insightful)
Since, we don't give Geoff the gee sound either, although we appear to offer a phonetical alternative spelling.
Don't forget. We've deemed it appropriate to have shuggar on a Wed-nez-day in Feb-roo-ary.
It's also the way our language helps us determine when to ask, "You're not from around here, are you?" Looking at you, R-Kansas.
gee-eye-eff (Score:2)
I also say ess-sea-ess-eye
Like gigawatt (Score:5, Funny)
It's pronounced like gigawatt. That is, with a soft g.
Modern "GIFs" (Score:3)
Re:Modern "GIFs" (Score:5, Insightful)
And then ignorant people keep calling every video "a GIF" even though video files are not animated/graphic files.
Stopping the widespread use of "GIF" to mean "video" should be the topic here, not the proper way to pronounce GIF.
Jif contains sugar (Score:2)
well duh (Score:2)
Just an unneeded reminder for me (Score:2)
Just my 2 cents
We could always go back to Old English (Score:5, Informative)
Language changes with usage, so hard and soft g both seem to be reasonable conclusions. If not, we can always keep going back, all the way to Old English:
the Old English word gif 'if' (pronounced "yiff")
(from a completely unrelated article about entries for the Universal Coded Character Set [evertype.com] that has, of course, bounced around the internet since).
Damn slashdot, reposting Compuserve and Bix? (Score:2)
Settled (Score:2)
It's pronounced "gif".
For reference, see: https://imgur.com/gallery/RRKV... [imgur.com]
Well then (Score:2)
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compuserve didn't charge that much. Maybe if you were using a tymnet node to access it. I had a account from 88 to 95 and used to drive to the nearest dialup location and get a hotel room. I finally found a hotel that the guy would let me stay dialed up from midnight to seven AM and I would login and grab all the new stuff I wanted that week using TapCIS. After I had grabbed what I wanted from CompuServe I would dial up and access BBS through the local tymnet node and that cost more than CompuServe.
I was around when the format came out. (Score:2)
Its Gif pronounced Jif, like the peanut butter. End of story. I can't help it if someone can't accept that.
CompuServe used it and if you never used CompuServe, you don't know jack. [olsenhome.com]
Just accept it as a GIFt (Score:2)
What other words start with 'gif'? Gift is one. Probably the most closely related word to gif. And it's got a hard G.
It's Yif! (Score:2)
We Germans use the hard "G", of course (Score:2)
GRAPHICS doesn't start with a J (Score:2)
Easy solution... (Score:2)
gigantic gif (Score:2)
There's a gigantic gigabyte gif in my git repo Giles!
the question is a lie (Score:3)
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Clearly it's pronounced "yiff".
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Stay where you are; we have a team on the way.
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Wishing it, doesn't make it so. Neither does pissing your money away on a domain name.
Domain names are (generally) quite cheap. $10 or $15 / year to have some fun and/or make a point is no big deal.
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How do you pronounce giraffe?
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How do you pronounce giraffe?
Or ...
(a) "gyro" (gyroscope) [ pronounced: jiro ]
(b) "gyro" (tasty Greek food) [ pronounced: yero ]
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How do you pronounce "git"?
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pea nnnn geee
Get with the times.
Also... "/e t c" (or the Latin "/et-cetera") -- not "/et c".
Re:peanut butter (Score:5, Funny)
It is pronounced like "JIF" the peanut butter.
Stupid jit.
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The pronounciation seems to fit the language just fine.
Gilbert the git goes down a ginnel to get a gimlet (Score:2)
Which language, though? J sound before i or e is the rule in Italian. Of the words you used gentle, giants & angels are from that side of the family. Orange is Spanish, though it should be norange.
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Gif: The gift that keeps on giving.
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Only if JPEG is pronounced "jay-pheg".
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