• apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Honestly have never understood the gif debate. Words sometimes have multiple pronunciations. They’re both fine.

    • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de
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      11 months ago

      it’s an acronym (as opposed to initialisms, which are not pronounced as a single word). There is no rule on pronunciation.

      scuba nato laser

      We don’t do this for any other acronym. There is no rule about the pronunciation. It’s arbitrary. The creator chose “jif”, so that’s the “canonical” one.

      • palordrolap@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        That guy must have really enjoyed getting jifts at Christmas.

        In other news, can we hook a dynamo up to wherever he’s buried because the high RPM would probably power a small country at this point.

        • Draghetta@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          jifts for Christmas

          Yes, the time when you eat gingerbread and drink ginormous amounts of gin, if you get the gist

          Let’s hang everybody who claims that gif is pronounced jiff, but not because (as you seem to imply) that’s not how “gi” is read in English because nothing is read always like anything ever in English

          • palordrolap@kbin.social
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            11 months ago

            All English words that start “gif-” (and for that matter “giv-”) have a hard g.

            While English is well known for a mess of exceptions, GIF has, or had, no precedent for soft G, so you’ll forgive people for thinking that the choice of soft G on GIF is a little unusual and being rubbed the wrong way by it.

            • Draghetta@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              All words that start with “gif” have a hard g because there is only one: gift. If “gift” had a soft g, then all the words that start with “gif-“ would have a soft g. If it only has one case of application it’s an accident, not a rule.

              And again, saying this as somebody who agrees on “gif” having a hard g despite the delirious claims of its inventor.