23 May 2013

Joy


Found at imgur (p.s. - discovered this week that it's pronounced "imager").

And GIF is pronounced "jif" (according to its creator):
He is proud of the GIF, but remains annoyed that there is still any debate over the pronunciation of the format. “The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations,” Mr. Wilhite said. “They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.”
The counterargument is presented at Sentence First:
I’ve written about the pronunciation of GIF before, but a lot of people are still confused about it. There’s no need to be. Wilhite may have invented the GIF but he can’t decide its pronunciation for everyone. Each of us gets to choose how we say a new word, and most people say GIF with a hard g – unsurprisingly, given the sound’s dominance in English words containing the letter. Language being democratic, hard-g /gɪf/ is therefore the dominant usage. But “jif” is a significant variant, equally standard and clearly preferred by some communities...

In the meantime, you don’t have to adopt the inventor’s preference. He did us a great technical service, but he’s not the boss of English. You’re the boss of your own English. GIF is in the public domain: say it any way you want.

13 comments:

  1. The 'g' in graphics is a hard G, not a J, as in Jiff. Therefore GIF is pronounced GIF. Not JIF.

    And Imgur has no 'a', so it's NOT pronounced 'Imager'.

    That's as silly as that Irish bloke who insist he's called Bonno, but can't spell it.

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    1. soubriquet, the link for the pronunciation of Imgur is their FAQ page:

      "How do you pronounce Imgur?
      Imgur is pronounced like image-er; imager."

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  2. @soubriquet, I think the inventor of the format is entitled to say how GIF is pronounced.

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    1. @BJNicholls I think the inventor of the letter G is entitled to say how G is pronounced.

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    2. An inventor is perfectly entitled to let us know their preference, but is not entitled to declare that any other pronunciation is 'incorrect' once the term enters into common use.

      Stan Carey has a blog post on the subject, which won't convince anyone predisposed to disagree, but is a good summary of the case against the inventor's authority.

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  3. This dog looks like he's having the best time just enjoying the wind streaming by.

    As for the pronunciation of GIF, the soft g is also found in giraffe. I'd differ to the inventor for preferred pronunciation.

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  4. Someone ought to send the inventor a "jift" for "jiving" us this wonderful image format.

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  5. Hard G, as in Graphics. For Graphics Interchange Formula. The "author" isn't being particularly smart about this. And he's not going to change it. Tough luck.

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  6. It is interesting how sharply defensive people can get when told they are pronouncing a word incorrectly. It's an acronym, sweethearts—it doesn't have official pronunciation rules. Let it go.

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    1. When a word has been pronounced the same way for 20 years, it gets totally in-grained. Language is like that -- no one is in charge, even the man who created the format. Think of Alexander Graham Bell who wanted us to answer the phone by saying "Ahoy!" -- even though it was his invention, he didn't get his way on that.

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  7. My thanks to Adrian for linking to my old post on the pronunciation of GIF.

    For what it's worth, I wrote a follow-up post this morning to address the latest silly fuss. Summary: you can say GIF any way you like. Language tolerates variation, even if some of its users don't.

    I love the photo, and you've titled it well.

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  8. I've been mulling this over for a few days. I actually had students give me grief in the middle of a class I was teaching because I pronounced GIF with the soft G as I've done all my life. The internet is supposed to be a place where everyone can be free to express themselve, but it also seems to be a place where the mob rules. Might makes right, with "might" meaning sheer numbers.

    Not that the pronunciation of an acronym is really that important (one friend likened it to the pronunciation of "Linux"), but many really do care and that seems to bother me. I can't figure out why.

    I started thinking about this issue as an example of the changing nature of authority. Yes, I'm reading into it too much. But the internet does seem to change how we view experts, scientists, politicians, and others with authority. I get a sense that everyone is their own authority here because we can find websites to back up our own claims. And if enough of us agree on an opinion then it becomes "true." If it appears on Wikipedia then it must be right.

    So the creator of the GIF, despite being a real "authority" on the file format, has no authority, has no legitimate say because enough people disagree. The "evidence" of how different G-words are said are merely incidental to the real argument: "You're wrong because we say so."

    Frankly, this scares me.

    (end pretentious rant)

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  9. If you absolutely have to be right, you can just pronounce the letters individually, as one would do with, say a BLT sandwich.

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