• OldManBOMBIN@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    My giant giraffe agrees.

    If you’re still unconvinced, say “G”

    The letter starts with the J sound.

    Checkmate atheists.

    • MeanEYE@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      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.

        • MeanEYE@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          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.

          • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            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.

            • MeanEYE@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              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.

    • snowe@programming.dev
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      6 months ago

      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.

      • Annoyed_🦀 🏅@monyet.cc
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        6 months ago

        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.

  • Floshie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    6 months ago

    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

  • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

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

  • timelighter@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    comes back

    Bilbo is gay!

    dies

    comes back

    Nazgul are just men in dresses!

    not canceled cause that’s true

  • EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de
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    6 months ago

    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.

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      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.

        • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          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.

      • Rhaedas@kbin.social
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        6 months ago

        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.

      • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        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?

        • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          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.

      • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        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?

  • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    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.

    • Handles@leminal.space
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      6 months ago

      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).