We were literally told it was pronounced “jif” by the creator. Sorry if it hurts your little feelings
I’m 99% sure the creator was either being sarcastic, or he decided to be a contrarian for the internet clicks. “GIF” is an acronym that stands for “Graphics Interchange Format”. It makes very little sense to intentionally pronounce it like a peanut butter brand.
Contrarian when he said “choosy developers choose gif” (implying the soft g) in 1987? I think that precedes the internet debate a little
actually, gif is an acronym. Specifically not an initialism. That means that it is pronounced as a single word (like “scuba”, but unlike “fbi” or “nsa”).
The pronunciation of the acronym does not have to conform to the original pronunciation of the letters.
Examples:
the “p” in jpeg stands for the “ph” sound, but we pronounce it as a hard “p”.
The “u” in scuba stands for “underwater”. We still pronounce it as “scOOba” not “scAAba”
So why is “gif” any different? Its creator chose the soft G for the pronunciation of the acronym (not its expansion), and therefore it is the correct one, simply because there is no rule about how it should be pronounced, so the choice was his. He made it
Whoever invented all the words in that sentence certainly didn’t pronounce them like you do.
I mean, id pronounce them the way the creators said if they were here and specifically told me how to pronounce it 💁🏻
He waited til 2013 to come out and say that though, when he made it back in 1987. What he wants doesn’t matter.
The most popular way to pronounce a word wins; Sorry if it hurts your little feelings.
