this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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[–] thrawn21@lemmy.world 160 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Somehow, I can tolerate "jpheg" much easier than the forsaken "jif."

[–] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 57 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Jif is where it's at. Peanut butter and image format? Yes please

[–] youngalfred@lemm.ee 26 points 11 months ago (3 children)

But Jif in Australia is a cleaning solution - can we have different pronunciations based on country?

[–] bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 14 points 11 months ago

No need, it's Gif. Heathens be damned.

[–] phobiac@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Y'all love diminutives, call them jiffies?

[–] Nihilore@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Jiffy is already an abstract measurement of time though

[–] KISSmyOS@lemmy.world 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Fits perfectly.
Jiffy is the average length of a gif.

[–] SuckMyWang@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Give me about four jiffies, I’ve just got to finish wiping my ass

[–] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 4 points 11 months ago

Sounds more than fair. We can't agree to a person on our sounds anyway.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 14 points 11 months ago (3 children)

The creators literally referenced this early on "choosy devs choose gif" like the jiff peanut butter commercial.

[–] fiah@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 11 months ago

this goes deeper than I thought!

[–] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yes, and that’s stupid.

It’s not ‘Jraphical Image Format’. Gah!!!

[–] snuff@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Oh my God no one fucking cares about Steve Wilhite and his fucking speech impediment.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] Tier1BuildABear@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago

That's a lot of peanut butter

[–] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 15 points 11 months ago (4 children)

"Jif" is the original pronunciation. It is a pun, a play on the word "jif" short for "jiffy" meaning a short amount of time, as in "I'll send it to you in a gif". The newer pronunciation has become popular based on the fallacious reasoning that an acronym should be pronounced the same as its constituent words, which isn't a thing at all.

Language evolves, and both pronunciations are common enough to be considered acceptable. The only way to be wrong about how to pronounce the word is to claim one of the pronunciations is wrong.

[–] Doug@midwest.social 48 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Become popular? It's been popular roughly for the lifespan of the format. It's hardly language's fault the developer wanted to make an unfunny reference to a since forgotten peanut butter slogan.

On the other hand linguistics indicate a hard g sound with the construction of the word, constituent words aside. Plenty of four letter words starting with the gi combo have a hard g, including but not limited to gift which you may notice is very similarly constructed.

Whatever else the English language may throw at us, people appreciate consistency because we can make some sense of the world. A hard g is the consistent, predictable, sensible choice for the limited availability of those virtues English offers.

[–] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Become popular? It's been popular roughly for the lifespan of the format.

I'm gonna stop you there, because I've been using the format for about 30 years, and people only started using the new pronunciation in the last 10-15.

Everything you said about linguistics is entirely crap. English is not a proscriptive language. English linguistics doesn't indicate anything at all. It is descriptive, and is anything but consistent. There are no rules about word construction or pronunciation. Words are pronounced the way they are understood, and if you are understood then you have pronounced them correctly.

You could argue that the original pronunciation is archaic, like "encyclopaedia," but the problem there is that the word itself is like 35 years old, and there are people like me who have been using the word since there was only one acceptable pronunciation who aren't likely to change.

[–] Doug@midwest.social 4 points 11 months ago (8 children)

people only started using the new pronunciation in the last 10-15.

As someone else pointed out already, this is untrue. While it may not have been popular in your circles, it definitely was in others. I've been saying it with a hard g as long as you have with a soft and I'm not the originator either.

English linguistics doesn't indicate anything at all.

They absolutely do. That's why you can sound out a word you've never seen before. You may not always be right when you do because they indicate, they don't define.

There are no rules about word construction or pronunciation.

There are, there are just exceptions. For example, an e at the end of the word is silent. I'm certain you can give me a word where it's not, but there are at least six in this paragraph alone where it is.

if you are understood then you have pronounced them correctly

In this logic if someone has been pronouncing a word all their life with a single pronunciation and travels to another location with a much different accent they can only now be pronouncing the word wrong.

If understanding is also the only metric then a hard g would still be preferable. Not only does a written g tend to make people lean to a hard g in my experience, but there's more words that could be mistaken for a soft g pronunciation.

You could argue that the original pronunciation is archaic,

Could I not argue that the original pronunciation has fallen out of favor?

the word itself is like 35 years old

Is there a time requirement for pronunciations to become archaic?

since there was only one acceptable pronunciation

Which isn't a time that existed, as we've established

who aren't likely to change.

Given your stance on language this is absolutely a you problem. If the rest of us collectively decided to understand it as only with a hard g, you would not be understood and therefore be pronouncing it wrong by your own logic.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

There are, there are just exceptions. For example, an e at the end of the word is silent. I’m certain you can give me a word where it’s not, but there are at least six in this paragraph alone where it is.

One of the most common words with a final "e" in that paragraph is "the" which not only has a final "e" sound, but has two different final "e" sounds depending on the context: "the end" uses a /ði/ pronunciation but "the word" uses a /ðə/ pronunciation. English is very stupid.

But, I agree with your assessment. English has rules, or at least patterns. "G" is most often hard, not soft, because "J" is available for the soft version, but there's no alternative for the hard version. English tends to follow patterns, and "gift" has a hard g, and it (and words based on it) are the only ones that start with "gif", so every "gif" word is hard. Because "t" (unlike "e") can't change the sounds before it, the pattern says that "gif" should have a hard "g".

If it were "gir", then there would be more debate. The word "giraffe" has a soft "g" but "girl" has a hard one, so the pattern is more muddy.

Also, people who coin words don't get to decide how they'll be pronounced. They can certainly try, but they'll often lose. There are plenty of words in English borrowed from other languages that not only sound nothing like the original language, but that sound nothing like they'd sound if they were English words. For example, "lingerie". It's a French word, but the English pronunciation sounds nothing like a French word. In fact, if someone just sounded out the word as if it were an English word, they'd probably get much closer to the French pronunciation than the awful "lawn-je-ray" which is the current accepted English pronunciation (though, they'd probably assume a hard "g" sound).

In this case, it's too bad that Steve Wilhite didn't have a background in linguistics or he would have realized that people would see "gif" and assume a hard "g". It was a losing fight from the start because he either didn't understand the assumptions people would have when they saw those letters, or he thought that somehow he could successfully fight the tide all by himself.

[–] owen@lemmy.ca 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Your illustration using the word “the” here is awesome. Particularly the alternative pronunciations. I would also like to add the well known words “be”, “he”, “she” and “me” into the mix.

[–] force@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

If understanding is also the only metric then a hard g would still be preferable. Not only does a written g tend to make people lean to a hard g in my experience, but there's more words that could be mistaken for a soft g pronunciation.

What? That's just a silly claim, the word "gift" is generally pronounced [gɪft̚] with the /t/ having no release, often the last consonant isn't even perceived by speakers, if anything that is extremely easy to mix up with "gif" using a /g/ as opposed using a /dʒ/, compared to any other words (well I guess there's "jif" the peanut butter brand?). You make a bad argument.

Also yes, if someone pronounced or used a word one way and then went to some theoretical place where everyone else pronounced or used it in a way where it becomes mutually unintelligible, then yes you WOULD be saying it "wrong" if you insisted on pronouncing it in a way nobody can decipher it, if you can call anything in language "wrong". French speakers can't just go say shit to Sicilian speakers and expect to be understood.

But no, there are no rules about word construction or pronunciation. The closest thing we have to "rules" is loose standards that people commonly us. And in the context of this conversation, most English standards don't invoke any sort of phonemic spelling like e.g. Spanish or French or Polish or Korean or whatever. There are no "spelling rules" that dictate that a certain sequence of letters or words has to be pronounced a certain way regardless of context, even according to standards of English. None of that "exceptions" bs, Modern English spelling is mostly based off of a writing system of a language that Modern English speakers wouldn't even understand, and as such there are only a few sometimes-consistencies-ish, like using certain constructs to differentiate lax vs tense vowels like doubling the following consonant letter vs appending an "e" at the end, when applicable. It's just infeasible due to the history of the writing system to apply a consistent convention for phonemic spelling without reforming the entire orthography.

This is opposed to, say, French, in which standard spellings have actually consistent throughout the entire language rules for how a certain combination of letters is formally pronounced (regardless of how much French speakers like to claim their spelling is nonsense), sometimes with secondary/uncommon pronunciations, and with exceptions to those rules. And consistent rules for phenomena like liaison. And applying those rules, you can systematically pronounce a majority of words accurately even if you've never encountered the language in your life. Here's a table just for fun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_orthography#Spelling_to_sound_correspondences

This is not something you can do in English.

And even using the argument of standards, the most common descriptions of Standard English (e.g. Oxford's dictionaries, Merriam-Webster, AHD) all list both /gɪf/ and /dʒɪf/.

Also you claim that the latter is falling out of favor, but that seems to have come from thin air. All the resources on the matter in the first place are online polls with a small sample size and a lot of bias in terms of the location of the respondants from like a decade ago, idk how you determine that one is more popular than the other in a way other than "I hear X pronunciation more than Y". The fact that this argument is seen all over the internet and is extremely contentious should be proof enough to show you that that claim is fallacious.

[–] Doug@midwest.social 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

From the top there's also jiff, meaning hurry. With no more effort that puts me at two and you at one, which is more as I said. Mine are also direct homophones whereas yours relies on a certain practice that I have very different experience on the frequency of than you do.

So you recognize how exceptions work but deny they're a part of English construction? It's all just barely organized chaos? Where's whatever amount of organization coming from if not rules that are frequently excepted?

Yes, I'm well aware that other languages have much better structure. I'm not sure how that means English doesn't have rules. As a kid surely between you and some friend someone's house had fewer rules that were less enforced. Did that mean they didn't have any rules? Of course not!

I'll admit my falling out of favor statement isn't scientific. However if we take the other fella's assertation about it only being pronounced one way to begin with then it's very much falling out of favor.

Either way I'm not looking to start yet another branch of this argument. Least of all with someone who starts by saying English doesn't have rules with exceptions because French does.

[–] force@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't think you've ever had a single bit of education on linguistics in your life and it shows.

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[–] imalemmy@iusearchlinux.fyi 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

an unfunny reference to a since forgotten peanut butter slogan.

Yep. Jiffy is only used for peanut butter. Great point!

[–] Doug@midwest.social 3 points 11 months ago

You can find plenty of places where the claim is that it's a soft g because "choosey devs choose gif".

Where jiffy is used is irrelevant in that case.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

It's been popular in use but casual everyday people weren't always bringing them up in conversation.

English is not consistent, accept that. You can say gif but I'll continue to call it gif.

[–] assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

English is not consistent, accept that.

This is the real answer. Both are correct and that's that. It can be gif as in image, or gif as in graphic.

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[–] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 13 points 11 months ago

The approximately equal amount of upvotes and downvotes this comment received pretty much sums up the entire gif wars.

[–] STUPIDVIPGUY@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago (2 children)

It's Gif and I don't care what anyone says

[–] Riccosuave@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't care either. Now excuse me while I go gerk off.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Oh yeah well I say drink more Ovaltine

[–] Slovene@feddit.nl 2 points 9 months ago

Why do they call it Ovaltine? The container is round. The mug is round. They should call it Roundtine.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The newer pronunciation has become popular based on

The newer pronunciation has become popular based on their internalization of the obscure patterns of English pronunciation, informed by the most similar word: "gift" which uses a hard g. Everyone I know of started saying it with a hard g because that's what made sense based on the spelling, long before hearing the weird thing about constituent words.

Nobody pronounced LASER as Lah-seer, which you'd have to do if you used "A as in Amplification" an "E as in Emission".

[–] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

OK but there are other similar words that start with gi like giraffe and gigolo, but really that's not why I or anyone I knew in the 90s started using the soft g to say "gif." We did so because we learned about the format, and said "Neat, what's it called?" and they said "it's called a gif" because that was the name of the format. We didn't debate the pronunciation because it had been given a name, the same way you don't ask a person you just met "Shouldn't 'Bob' be pronounced with a long 'o' like the very similar name 'Job'? I'm going to call you 'Bobe' because that makes more sense to me." You'd have to be a massive douche to say that out loud to a person who had just introduced themselves.

If someone said it with the hard "g" we just nodded and went about our day because it doesn't matter, we knew what they probably meant and they just hadn't read the manual.

Pronunciations change over time, and that's good. Language is a function of communication, and better communication is what enabled humans to transfer knowledge. If someone uses the soft g, you know the word they're saying, and I know you're probably not saying the word "gift" from context. We're communicating either way, and we don't have to pronounce every word the same.

Case in point, I don't say "emission" with a long "e" sound, I say "ehmission" because it doesn't matter that much.

The only way to be wrong is to claim that someone else is saying it wrong.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

“Neat, what’s it called?” and they said “it’s called a gif”

Yeah, and then we all assumed it was pronounced "gif" not "jif" because the only other word with the letters "gif" was "gift" and that had a hard g. Later on, someone claimed it was supposed to be pronounced "jif", but we all laughed at that idea and kept using the correct pronunciation.

We didn’t debate the pronunciation because it had been given a name

Neither did we, it was a hard g. There was no debate. Sure, some people claimed it was supposed to be a soft g, but we all laughed at that idea because it was ridiculous.

We didn’t debate the pronunciation because it had been given a name, the same way you don’t ask a person you just met “Shouldn’t ‘Bob’ be pronounced with a long ‘o’ like the very similar name ‘Job’?

I'm guessing you're not multilingual then, because I am, and it's extremely common to change how someone's name is pronounced. People with the name "David" who are French are used to the French pronunciation of their name being "Dah-veed" but in English "Day-vid". French people pronounce "Bob" as "Bub". It's good to allow people to slightly change how your name is pronounced because it flows better in their language. If they have to pause every time your name comes up to adapt how it's said, it just makes things more difficult.

As for "gif", if someone pronounced it as "jif", we giggled a bit, but that's it. It was only if someone was really insistent that it had to be a soft g that we really laughed. Some people tried to claim that the creator of the format had wanted a certain pronunciation, but we knew that didn't matter.

Language is a function of communication, and better communication is what enabled humans to transfer knowledge

Exactly, and part of good communication is good pronunciation, because if you mispronounce things it makes it harder for people to understand you. If you insist on using a nonsensical pronunciation then you're just trying to make it hard to communicate with you.

[–] force@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

That is the most anti-linguistic take ever lmao. There is no such thing as an objectively correct pronunciation, both pronunciations of "gif" are valid in the context of most English conversations.

On another note, the guy who created it said it's pronounced /dʒɪf/, so if any pronunciation is more "correct" it's the one you hate. It's not "some people tried to claim", that's what it actually is "correctly" pronounced like according to the only one that can come close to being considered an authority on what the correct pronunciation is.

Your comment being so pretentious and stuck-up about you not liking a pronunciation leads me to believe you're making the whole "we" thing up, and instead of a group of people being dumbasses and laughing at a correct pronunciation, it was just one person (you) malding about it in their head. Because being the kind of person to actually laugh at something like that in real life, face to face, would be too embarrassing for anyone to actually go through with it. God even just reading your comment makes me feel like I'm looking at made-up Reddit stories again...

Also how people speaking other languages handle names doesn't have anything to do with this, there's a big difference between calling someone "wrong" for pronouncing a loanword differently than in the parent language because of the languages' phonetics & phonotactics not aligning with each other, and insisting that everyone else is "wrong" because their completely linguistically valid, common pronunciation challenges your understanding of the language.

Oxford uses /dʒɪf/ as the primary pronunciation with /gif/ as the secondary in most of their resources (although a lot don't specify a primary or secondary), Dictionary.com lists /dʒɪf/ as the primary pronunciation, some like Merriam-Webster list both equally, Cambridge less consistent but list both. Clearly the people who's job is language disagree with you, even if you don't want to ask for linguists to tell you, they literally make the language references you use. If you want to be stubborn and insist on being wrong, so be it.

You can now continue malding about the fact that you use the incorrect pronunciation for the rest of your life, since apparently that's how you see language.

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[–] knorke3@lemm.ee 7 points 11 months ago

always remember that yiff is a valid option