Word wonks insist GIFs are really JIFs
Not content with somehow managing to proclaim ‘GIF’ the USA’s word of the year for 2012, the lexicographers at Oxford Dictionaries now insist that the correct pronunciation of the word does not use a hard g, as in golf. The dictionary chose GIF as its word of the year because the USA has gone GIF-crazy. Making satirical GIFs of …
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Re: Pronunciation comes from the words it acronymizes
Do you pronounce JPEG as JFEG (joint photographic experts group)? No! So why apply different logic to GIF?
It is jiff as in giant ginger gifs.
@Jack Ketch Re: Pronunciation comes from the words it acronymizes
"I keep seeing this 'rule' being parroted, but can anyone actually find a source for it?" Yes, it's called 'derivation'. Look that up in a dictionary. A good dictionary will even give you the derivation of 'derivation'.
"I know of many acronyms in regular use which do not follow it" So do I , but they all should.
"and there is no such controversy over their pronunciations." There is plenty of controversy: see commentards above and below.
"Acronyms are words in their own right." They can become so, given enough use, though usually acronyms are just acronyms not words.
Re: @Jack Ketch Pronunciation comes from the words it acronymizes
What a lovely straw man you've constructed there.
Source please.
Kinda odd
Its an acronym, so surely it should take on the letters of the words it is formed from. G.I.F. GIF. So, a hard G.
Why does the creator get to suddenly change the pronunciation of it? What if they'd decided that it should be pronounced with an extra Z? Would the OED agree then?
gif, jif who cares...?
... But for the OED to suggest it could be a verb? If I heard anyone talk about 'giffing' I'd cuff them round the head, and no two ways about it.
Verbing weirds language
"Whichever pronunciation you use, it should of course be the same for both the noun and the verb."
Whoever uses GIF as a verb should have one of those dropped on them (see icon).
Hard G here, because Graphics has a hard G, and because there's already at least two other words with the J sound - "JIF" (JPEG Interchange Format) and "jiffy" (one tick of the interrupt timer according to Wikipedia).
Wasn't there a tv ad about 10 years ago
where the makers of Jif said it was now pronounced Cif?
Re: Wasn't there a tv ad about 10 years ago
Yes, but they did have the excuse that they were changing the name to "Cif".....
Re: Wasn't there a tv ad about 10 years ago
Would that be pronounced Sif or Kif?
40 something perma techie Brit here
GIF = hard G as in GRAPHICS
JPG = JAY PEG
SQL = SEQUEL
MPG/MPEG = EM PEG
Router = ROOTER
SAP = S.A.P.
30 something perma techie Brit here
GIF = hard G as in GRAPHICS
JPG = JAY PEG
PNG = PING
SQL = SEQUEL
MySQL = My ES Q EL
MPG/MPEG = EM PEG
Router = ROOTER
SAP = "That piece of shit that one customer uses."
Re: 40 something perma techie Brit here
No, I've always thought SQL should be pronounced 'squeal' as it gives an opportunity for lots of Deliverance jokes.
Re: 40 something perma techie Brit here
That's OK, I once worked in a place where it was common to call SQL "squill".
Re: 30 something perma techie Brit here
Solder = Solder (not 'sodder', don't you see that L there?)
GIF = hard G as in GRAPHICS
JPG = JAY PEG or J. P. G. - I'm not fussed.
PNG = P. N. G.
SQL = S. Q. L, and if you call it sequel I'll just turn around and walk away because your opinion is worthless.
MySQL = My S. Q. L, see above.
SQL Server = Sequel Server - who said I have to be consistent?
MPG = M. P. G.
MPEG = EM PEG
Router = ROOTER
SAP = either S. A. P. or Oh for fucks sake do I really have to?
What utter nonsense. I'll start pronouncing it with a soft G when people start saying "Jraphic". I don't give a monkey's what the "inventors" say - they invented a file format, not a bloody language.
So weird. All these people claiming JIFF rather than GIFF
Never heard anyone call it a JIFF#
Jiff is the old name of a cleaning product now call cif.
Wonder if its US/UK based with our american brothers and sisters getting it wrong again and using a J sound.
"Jiff is the old name of a cleaning product now call cif."
At the expense of throwing fuel on the fire, I saw the product before the ads and thought it was pronounced kif ...
I thought I had it sorted...
When ambiguous pronounciations crop up I do a spot of Googling to see if I can find the right way to say it, trying to find the definitive source from the experts. Back in the 90s my research led me to conclude that it was Gif rather than Jif, to the annoyance of my soft G co-workers. Now I found I was wrong?! I can feel egg on my face.
However, they still say Linux with a Lie rather than a Lynn, silly people :)
Re: I thought I had it sorted...
"However, they still say Linux with a Lie rather than a Lynn, silly people :)"
Mult-eye-threading is one that always cracks me up.
Gif with a hard G for me down in that thar London and I've rarely heard it pronounced with a J. More often it's non-techies who I've heard pronounce it with a J. I also like to say 'Linnux' as opposed to 'Lie-nux' because it's more likely to piss people off.
How about SQL - Ess-cue-ell or See-quel? I prefer the former.
@Rufus
"How about SQL - Ess-cue-ell or See-quel? I prefer the former."
As I understand it, Sequel was actually a different language to SQL, or SQL was derived from it. Strucutred English Query Language or something? I saw it written long before hearing much about it and it's stuck in my head as the former. Besides, I think the ISO standard pronunciation is Ess-cue-ell, isn't it?
Re: @Rufus
According to Wikipedia (I know, I know) :
"SQL was initially developed at IBM by Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce in the early 1970s. This version, initially called SEQUEL (Structured English Query Language), was designed to manipulate and retrieve data stored in IBM's original quasi-relational database management system, System R, which a group at IBM San Jose Research Laboratory had developed during the 1970s. The acronym SEQUEL was later changed to SQL because "SEQUEL" was a trademark of the UK-based Hawker Siddeley aircraft company. "
I use Sequel for SQL and PL/SQL, but S-Q-L for MySQL, SQLServer etc...
You say tomato, I say tomato
I've a feeling that the origin of the soft g was in the USA; I worked with some people back in the late 90's that had been over there and they brought the pronuciation back with them. Those of us stay at homes used the hard g.
Personally, I don't care which they use; I'm not even bothered by the way that some people say "dah - tah" instead of "day-ta". But for some reason, I get really wound up by those that pronounce "dissect" as if it had only one s (you bi-sect a circle, you dis-sect a corpse)
Does anyone jive a damn?
I've always used a harg G. Jif is a kitchen cleaner now called Cif but I don't know if it's meant to be pronounced Kiff or Siff. Anyway I'm off to a jig tonight with my jirlfriend. I'll jet my coat...
Other mispronunciations
I once interview someone for a job programming in a language that he called "C hash". Needless to say he didn't get it.
Re: Other mispronunciations
to be fair the sharp sign is different from the hash sign and that is what they use
Obligatory PAST TENSE moan
This is el Reg forums, please leave all concepts of tense and inflection at the door.
Re: Other mispronunciations
I wouldn't give a job to anyone that called it anything other than C-Hash.
That's what it says, that's what it's supposed to be.
Only americans call it C-Pound as perhaps it was intended to be by MS
Re: Other mispronunciations
You seriously think it's called C-Hash? I take it you have no musical education whatsoever. It is OBVIOUSLY a pun on the musical note C-Sharp and should therefore be pronounced accordingly. Anyone who does otherwise is just plain ignorant.
Re: Other mispronunciations
Or its more logical pronunciation, D-flat
Re: Other mispronunciations
I think it's a troll. Of course it's c sharp...
Re: AC Thursday 15th November 2012 12:51 GMT
Well where I went to school the little music education we had at my primary school (actually most people I know had 0 in theirs) didn't get into anything like reading notes on a score so to the vast majority they see it as a pound sign or hash.
Re: Other mispronunciations
I don't hire programmers who don't pronounce "#" as "octothorpe".
`
I'm all for an homage to peanut butter, but in this case it's GIF, hard g as in Graphics, for me.
I'm off to Paree to see the Eyefull Tower
Very strange
Very strange seeing this discussion - it had never ever occurred to me that it could be pronounced 'jif'. Having worked as a software developer since 1979 (UK multinational) I have never heard the 'j' version. Not once - I'd remember if someone had said that, because, well, it's wrong... :)
isn't JIF a kitchen/bathroom cleaner?
perhaps the OED needs to clean up its act - GIF's are G-if's as in g for golf!
off in a JIF'y!
its a play on words
giant ginger gifs! It has always been pronounced this way! it was named in a play on words about peanut butter.
It's a good thing I didn't mention the dirty fork.
All this fuss over the pronunciation. It doesn't matter how you pronounce words so long as you are understood. Pronunciations change over time. If you want a proper argument, let's talk about punctuation. Don't you just hate people who leave the apostrophe out of let's?
Re: It's a good thing I didn't mention the dirty fork.
Except of course when they should leave it out:
"the housing company manages many LETS"
"the security policy LETS people use memory sticks as long as they are encrypted"
To be honest I would *rather* people left it out.
What is this GIF of which you speak?
I thought GIF was dead thanks to being patent encumbered. Why are they popular again? I thought they'd joined the lost image formats like JPEG2000, BMP (although, that's still handy to clean off metadata), WMP, VDI, ILBM etc?
That's why we have PNG (which is pronounced P.N.G. or 'ping').
Tch, young people today, they just can't keep up with the modern trends.
Re: What is this GIF of which you speak?
Basically GIF is used these days for small, shitty animations because animated PNG formats have not taken off, which is a bloody shame.
Of course, for everything else, PNG is now used.
Re: What is this GIF of which you speak?
The patents expired back in 2003/2004 (varies according to country).
Re: What is this GIF of which you speak?
The various LZW patents expired in 2003/2004 and GIF can freely be used.
Also the patent pretty much only stopped open source licensed software/websites from using it because they don't allow themselves to use anything with a patent. Most people used it without being sued before PNG took off. I recall using .gif support in the GD library. Officially you were not allowed and it came without it by default, but everyone did it.
Re: What is this GIF of which you speak?
PNG is not Ping, Ping is the IP testing routine we all use
Many eons ago
i worked in maplins, we had people asking for sub woo-fers, capacitators and steerio cross-overs and others that escape my ever decreasing RAM. The important thing is we knew what they meant....
Verb?
"...it should of course be the same for both the noun and the verb.”
Verb!?!?! To GIF? Am I the only one never to have heard of this magical verb?
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