• soloner@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Not to mention the creator of GIF prefers the JIF pronunciation.

      It doesn’t really matter, but I find the hard g folks have a stick up their ass about it.

      • SwampYankee@mander.xyz
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        8 months ago

        Yeah, I have friends who say it with a hard g and I never say a damn thing, but I say jif once and it’s “jraphics” this and “jod” that. I get it, you watched that stupid video in 2012, congrats.

        • NightAuthor@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Maybe we should up the ante on this war, and start actively making fun of those who be hating on peanut butter. There are plenty of arguments for either pronunciation, but jiffers are losing the war bc we’re being so passive. Just living our lives, as if the pronunciation of a word doesn’t fucking matter if everyone knows what you mean…. We need to eradicate the culture of soft-g giffers

      • irish_link@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I understand your point in the creator but I find fault in that argument.

        Historically it doesn’t matter what the creator of anything prefers unless it’s an “unveiling” and they name it on the spot. People in general will take something and run with it regardless of the creators intent. The perfect example is “light saber” versus “laser sword.” (Edit forgot to add the word sword after laser)

        To be honest I don’t care all that much. If you say jif or gift without the t, either way I know what you are talking about.

    • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      People also like to argue it’s an acronym, but do you pronounce NASA the same as you pronounce the first letter of each word of National Aeronautics and Space Administration?

      Um, yes?

      I’m assuming we’re talking about the two A letters here, since nothing comes to mind about a different pronunciation of N or S in American English.

      In American English - at least in my experience - the first sound in aeronautics is exactly the same as in “air,” which is also the same as in “administration.” We don’t generally say it as in “ear-onautocs.”

      Also, I’m curious - has anyone ever published a study describing whether or not the difference in pronunciation differs between sectors in the computer science community? Particularly, is there a difference between normal developers and those who write in a Lisp?

      • RandomGen1@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        SCUBA, LASER, JPEG, ROM, etc. all break the “pronounced as the nested word” argument.

        I’m down for people to pronounce it however they please (assuming it’s recognizable as gif), but the post-hoc rationalizations trying to prove their side as the one true pronunciation are silly. The only rationalization that makes any sense to me is the “creator pronounces it as jif”, but language doesn’t work that way so even that doesn’t matter as far as “one true pronunciation” goes.

        • Sotuanduso@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          If aer in aeronautics is pronounced like air, and the A in NASA is pronounced like the aer in aeronatucis, then NASA rhymes with mesa, not tessa.

          I always pronounced NASA like naassuh, but I wanna try the mesa-rhyming version to mess with people.

    • AlolanYoda@mander.xyz
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      8 months ago

      To me, “gif” just looks like “gift” without the final “t”, which is why I pronounce it exactly the same until the t

  • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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    8 months ago

    I get the gist of what you are saying but gingerly I will inform you that my giraffe giblets are cold

    Sorry, that was just gibberish

  • witheyeandclaw@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    What did the creator of the GIF name them? Imagine if a bunch of people read your name wrong, then when you told them how it’s pronounced said that they don’t care, and your mom was wrong to pronounce your name that way.

    • Risk@feddit.uk
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      8 months ago

      Eh, I prefer the descriptivist method of language. It’s how language evolves over time.

      Comparing it to a personal name is a false equivalence. GIF is an acronym, people could enunciate each letter if they so preferred and it would be more accurate/true to creation than even the creator’s opinion of how to pronounce it.

      • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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        8 months ago

        I just don’t think that usual linguistic rules should apply to a thing that a guy literally invented and named.

        The person who invented it gets to name it.

        • Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          8 months ago

          Except he didn’t invent the words used to name what he invented. If he had just named it gif and pronounced it jif and non of those letters stood for anything I would see your point, but he didn’t. He named it graphic interchange format, shortened to gif. That said, who gives a shit pronounce it how you want. Language evolves anyways.

      • witheyeandclaw@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I see what you’re saying, and to a point I agree. I see it as people reading it a certain way in their head and becoming attached to how they think it should sound. This happens often because English words especially can have all manner of exceptions to the usual rules of spelling and grammar. There is nothing embarrassing about reading, or at least there shouldn’t be. What I DO find embarrassing is when people find out that they’re pronouncing something differently and flat out disagree with the world about its actual pronounciation.

        • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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          8 months ago

          What I DO find embarrassing is when people find out that they’re pronouncing something differently and flat out disagree with the world about its actual pronounciation.

          Man, you must be embarrassed all the time when you hear British or American people talk.

          Somehow the world can survive and we can understand one another with very different pronunciations of words like “Aluminum”, but this… THIS WILL NOT STAND!

        • Risk@feddit.uk
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          8 months ago

          I mean, it’s only embarrassing for them - if they want to be loud, proud, and wrong that’s okay.

          But at the same time, they may well set the trend for how it’s pronounced in the future.

          Lord knows, waDer (i.e. water) started somewhere…

          Edit: I’m guessing I offended someone by implying that saying ‘wadder’ is the wrong way to say water, hahaha.

    • Voyajer@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      That’s what happened to aluminium. Sir Humphrey Davey came up with aluminum in 1812 but his peers decided it wasn’t classical sounding enough.

      • IgneoTalus@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        I refuse to call it anything but Aluminum just for that. I find it insulting to Sir Humphrey Davey that his naming rights were basically stolen by someone completely unrelated.

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      What did the creator of the GIF name them?

      Island was originally spelt without an ‘s’. It was later added as a stylistic choice and is now the “correct” spelling. Language doesn’t give a fuck about original intent. If you want to be originalist about it then you need to hie back to corky English

    • agitatedpotato@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      How a computer scientist thinks words should be pronounced is not as convincing an argument as so many here seem to think.

  • Knasen@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    My old workplay everybody pronounced “Gigabyte” as “Jigabyte”, drove me nuts.

  • WereCat@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    “Pacific ocean” has each “c” pronounced differently. This is just an English thing. Makes for great puns “I’m not sick, it’s just a little COFFIN” but when it comes down to acronyms you guys are lost.

  • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    I hate this argument, that’s literally what the creators of the format called it. Names of things don’t always follow the rules of English.

    • Joe_0237@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      You are right except: there are no rules in english, and this isn’t an argument, its a joke.

    • Stoneykins [any]@mander.xyz
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      8 months ago

      Names of things don’t have to follow “the rules of english” to change and morph with who is using them.

      Acting like there is any immutable qualities to any language or word is kinda silly.

      Currently, with the common opinion split pretty well, the correct answer for how to say it is “‘gif’ or ‘jif’”. Call it whichever you want.

    • OneLemmyMan@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Sorry but no. Jif is what i said back then, and what i will say until i die. All the people i know have been calling it jif like “giraffe” and we will forever call it that. But if someone called it hard g gif i can understand what they are talking about just fine and i would literally pay 0 attention to it. Have better things to do. abcdef…gif.

      • SwampYankee@mander.xyz
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        8 months ago

        Yeah I took digital art classes in the 90s and the teacher and all the students pronounced it jif. I never heard the hard g until that dumb YouTube video.

    • commandar@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      If you say otherwise I’d be willing to bet you weren’t on the internet in the 90s or 00s.

      Bullshit. It’s always been divisive.

      There’s literally a Wikipedia article covering the fact that this has been debated going back to the 90s.

        • commandar@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          The article cites the opinion of an unnamed author of an unnamed “image encyclopedia.” Not really what I’d call definitive, which was the point.

          In my circles back then, soft G was predominant. I wouldn’t cite that as evidence of a One True Pronunciation either.

          There has always been debate about it. Hard G has certainly become predominant, but declaring that people that prefer soft G “weren’t on the internet back then” is revisionist at best.

        • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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          8 months ago

          Well, with no numbers on that statement it could be as little as 51% of people. Chalk me up in the “online since BBSs” and I’ve always said soft g.

          I’m more concerned with the poll further down the page that has a staggering 2.8% of people who pronounce each letter individually.

        • samus12345@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          And it would be incorrect. The point is there are multiple ways to pronounce G in English, none more valid than the other. Heck, how do you pronounce G itself?

    • PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      Where the fuck did I find someone in real life to talk to about image formats? I always thought it was j. I can’t even recall any conversations about it until the 2010s.

  • ieightpi@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Here’s another to add to the pronunciation wars. RetroArch is pronounced RetroArk. Which I will die on that hill because Arch stands for either Architecture or Archive. Too many times have I heard people on YouTube make it sound like McDonald’s golden arches.

  • Pandawhiskers@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    My first name starts with a G and it’s soft. Many people will read it and pronounce it hard. This argument is for my identity