It's canon now. And so is a certain image format.

Flying Squid@lemmy.worldmod to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 1146 points –
113

My giant giraffe agrees.

If you're still unconvinced, say "G"

The letter starts with the J sound.

Checkmate atheists.

I may sound haughty and knowledgable when I say JiF then, but between just you and me, I didn't know a damn thing about this and just decided to say it this way in my brain for reasons that remain unclear.

Me too. I just always said it with a soft G because my brain told me that's how it was pronounced.

Strange that I never got a notification for this. Hm.

I've always pronounced it that way for whatever reason, and when I learned that was the correct way I was very high and mighty, lol

Oh yeah? Well lick my gargantuan gorilla gonads.

(I'm actually team jif but can't help myself)

Oooh, that's how grammar works in English language? Okay, so me as a developer of some obscure thing from this point forward are instructing everyone to pronounce "home" as "hume", since that's how you pronounce "o" in "tomb". I decided that solely because my software is loosely related to the meaning of the word. K thx bai.

Did you invent the word home? No? So you don't get to decide how to pronounce it.

Neither did the author of graphic format. GIF is not a word, but initialism, like NSA, FBI, NASA, IBM, etc. And there are specific rules how they are read and pronounced.

NASA is an acronym, not an initialism. And guess how the last letter of NASA is pronounced versus how the A in the corresponding word is pronounced. Ah vs Uh.

Irrelevant comment to the discussion at hand as the matter is not set in stone in English language. More to the point it doesn't change the fact how GIF is pronounced. Even if you consider it an acronym it's still a form of abbreviation and not a word on its own with known heritage, hence the general rules on how to pronounce letter g do not apply.

Had the word originate from French part of the English dictionary (like gin, giraffe, etc.) then g is pronounced as j before vowels e and i and would make sense. But Germanic words (such as gift, geese) still use hard g. So applying normal rules is pointless, since English has no such thing.

In short, it's pronounced whatever the way people pronounce it. End of story.

I always think all the arguments are ridiculous because it’s essentially saying that someone is pronouncing a product (not a word) that they created incorrectly. This product even has a catchphrase for it. There’s literally nothing you can say to contradict that. It’s a product with a catchphrase that describes how to pronounce it. If you pronounce it differently then you do you, but you are wrong.

It's also pretty funny when it's about actual product you will get corrected to the intended pronunciation, or at least, allowed because people acknowledge there might be multiple way of reading a word based on where you from. Like potato and tomato.

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One thing I learned recently is that if GIF shall be pronounced "GIF" like the G in Graphical, JPEG shall be pronounced "JFEG" like the P in Photography

Just droppin that in

Fuck this, double standards ftw

Is it pronounced jilf then as well?

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Would be the worst retroactive devaluation of a body of literary work since JK Rowling showed the world how she really is.

I really don't think JK Rowling revealed who she really was. I think she demonstrated what too much money does to someone.

Nah, you become overconfident, callous and indifferent to the suffering of others from amassing extreme wealth.

Bigotry and pretending to be the victim of those you victimize is income-agnostic.

Good point. I guess it's a case of "a little of column A and a little of column B."

Anyone who uses the argument that Graphical is pronounced with a hard G sound needs to think about how they pronounce other acronyms, like SCUBA, NASA, LASER, SONAR, POG, SIM... the list goes on.

It's flattering that you think anybody knows what all of those acronyms actually stand for. I'm semi-certain of NASA, the rest could just be made up for all I know (as a non-native English speaker).

Kinda hard to forget SCUBA. Self contained underwater breathing apparatus

The creator of the GIF format says it's pronounced like Jiff, like the peanut butter.

He's wrong, even though he created the format.

I went looking for it, and apparently you’re right. He said “Jif”. He’s either trolling or being obstinate. People don’t see it that way, especially seeing as it’s the hard “G” from “Graphical” in the initialism. So he’s applying a pronunciation rule of soft G when followed with “i” when used in a word to an initialism - and acronyms aren’t words (noted: they can become treated as such).

GIF is not a word. So soft “g” when followed by “i” does not apply.

E: corrected to initialism, and now we have to debate if an initialism pronounced as an acronym should obey the soft G rule, or if it should be an exception. Exceptions do exist, so the soft G is not a hard rule.

Acronyms are words. They're words formed out of the initial letters of a phrase or name.

I went and looked it up.

Acronym is the most correct term. GIF can be an initialism or an acronym, however it becomes an acronym when we pronounce it as a word.

I’m not going to get into a debate over it obeying word rules when it starts as an initialism. That’s for scholars and asklemmy shenanigans.

The funny thing is that even though there are people on both sides dead set they are right, if they hear someone say the opposite pronunciation they still understand what the speaker is referring to. So there's absolutely no context lost, it's just preference, and I have a feeling given the age of the name GIF those preferences are very regional, as the internet had not become a national/international thing yet.

It's almost like there is no rule when pronouncing acronyms and people choose to pronounce them however sounds best to them. How do you pronounce the U in SCUBA? How do you pronounce the two As in NASA? The A in BASE jumping? The O in POG juice? The O in SONAR? The I in SIM card? The A in LASER? None of those are pronounced like the composite letters, so why is GIF so rigid?

It isn’t rigid.

The soft G with the following i is common. There are exceptions to that rule, so it really isn’t always a rule.

Also, GIF is an initialism, and an initialism pronounced as a word becomes an acronym. I really don’t want to debate whether an acronym has to obey “real” word rules.

That's dumb, It's "Graphics Interchange Format."

How do you pronounce the U in SCUBA? How do you pronounce the two As in NASA? The A in BASE jumping? The O in POG juice? The O in SONAR? The I in SIM card? The A in LASER?

Guess we need to remake the trilogy.

It will have 1 hour 30 minutes of Sam Merry and Pippin argue about potaeto and potahtoe. And Sauron will spend his time mentioning all the genders and races and gods can't kill him while he got stabbed in his face.

All letters before A are silent.

Ohh i see it's a geeraffe, a long necked animal.

And power ranger called down a guyan robot to fight guyan monster enemy.

He should also come out with some delicious spreads for toast, he could call them Jamdalf.

to be published in a limited gold embossed leather bound volume with 500 pages of commentary, March 2024

to be published in a limited gold embossed leather bound volume with 500 pages of commentary, March 2024

Tolkien fanatics: "Link?"

Also...link?

I mean... it might be $200 that I'll never justify spending. It might be entirely pointless and tarnishing professor Tolkien's legacy. But it's still going on my wishlist, yeh

The genius Tolkien, ever generous, gestured for a round of gin martinis from his giant gentle giraffe. Over gentle murmurs from the crowd, I caught the gist of his speech: genuinely it’s pronounced Jandalf.

Op doesn't know Frodo's real name is Froda. Tolkien changed it for modern ears.

Yep. And Samwise was Banazîr.

EDIT: Just did some more checking and, while Bilbo's name is actually Bilba, Frodo's name isn't Froda. It's Maura.

pronounces a proper noun differently than its creator then insisting he's the one who's wrong

Smh. I'd like to tell French people the way they pronounce their words is wrong too, wish me luck.