Pronouncing GIF
Posted April 25th, 2003 @ 03:02pm by Erik J. Barzeski
Chris backhandedly asks how you pronounce GIF in a recent entry. I'm inclined to say that most of the time, I say it with a hard G. After all, it stands for Graphics Interchange Format, not Jraphics. Plus it's not peanut butter.
However, when I say it in a sentence with the word "JPEG" I almost always say it with a "j" sound: "jifs and jpegs." How about you?
Posted 25 Apr 2003 at 3:13pm #
I always say Jifs or G - I - Fs.
Posted 25 Apr 2003 at 3:32pm #
Pronunciation of GIF
There is an old debate as to how to pronounce the acronym GIF. While it is one of those useless...
Posted 25 Apr 2003 at 3:50pm #
In general I find old schoolers use the 'j' sound and new schoolers use the 'g' sound. I use the 'j' sound.
Posted 25 Apr 2003 at 4:40pm #
Been pronouncing it with a hard G (as in "gaffer") since I started with computers...
Posted 25 Apr 2003 at 4:40pm #
I'm a hard G kinda guy until I'm with one of those "Jiff" people and I usually adopt their way of saying it.
Posted 25 Apr 2003 at 5:03pm #
Girl, groove, groin, Gilgamesh, GIF.
Gyrate, genuflect, gerund, gerbil, JPEG.
Posted 25 Apr 2003 at 9:15pm #
I really don't care if it's pronounced jif, I say gif with a hard G. GIF with a hard G sounds much better in my opinion.
Same as "OS X" and not "OS 10".
or
"nome" for GNOME instead of "g-nome".
Posted 25 Apr 2003 at 9:44pm #
How do you pronounce 'gift' or 'git'?
Or spell it out.
Posted 25 Apr 2003 at 10:56pm #
In German it's pretty clear that it's GIF like in graphics (there's no j-sound like in "jail").
Posted 26 Apr 2003 at 12:39am #
Gee eye eff
But occasionally, I'll adapt to what others are saying in the current conversation.
Posted 15 May 2003 at 6:16pm #
I pronounce it "pee enn gee" 😉
Posted 28 Sep 2003 at 3:08am #
I USED to think it was the hard G, but I see the creators say it was pronounced jif in the documents and the slogans were "choosy developers choose gif"... so it seems as though it was artistically intended to be gramatically incorrect... but it is actually not gramatically incorrect since the pronunciation of acronyms is apparently up to the author, in this case compuserve... there is also an email from the 1987 author telling some curious people it was always pronounced jif... so it depends now if you want to be true to the author or true to your opinion... so hopefully we can all be strong and call it peter pan...
go to this next link, not to my email unless it is something nice...
http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/july97/0045.html
Posted 29 Mar 2005 at 5:24pm #
I don't care who invented it, it's pronounced "gif".
Posted 08 Apr 2005 at 4:56pm #
I hear that whole jiff thing from the developer... but whenever I tried to say jiff it sounded wrong to me, and still does.
Like someone said earlier. If it's supposed to be pronounced jiff it should be named the jraphics interchange format. Personally, I think the person who said "hey lets pronounce it wierd like... jiff" is a real gerk. I mean jerk. I mean gerk. Ah, forget it.
Posted 01 Oct 2005 at 7:00pm #
It is, and always has been the soft 'g' (jif). Anybody who uses the argument that it should be a hard 'g' because it stands for 'graphical' had better start saying 'jay-feg' because the 'p' stands for 'photographic'.