GIF or JIF?

[GlitchyZorua]

There has been a debate whether or not its pronounced "JIF" or "GIF".

When someone pronounce it JIF, i think of it as the peanut butter.

When someone pronounces it GIF, I think of... a present, or an animated image, or a video.

No shame on pick either! I wanna hear your opinion on it!! 

[IndigoGolem]

I pronounce it /ɣɪf/ or /g͡ɣɪf/ (Wikipedia: IPA), which involves the fricative or affriacte version of the G sound. This is purely because i think the debate is silly and i enjoy picking the secret wrong answer to questions like this.

Or rather, i would pronounce it that way if i ever had occasion to talk about them. If ever think you meet me in person, maybe ask me about animated image file formats.

[Rubbereon]

This debate is tiresome and I don't care how you pronounce it. If the split between american and bretish pronunciation exists like Woh-ter in british and WAAH-ter in american, then why can't that exist for gif?

Actually this reminds me of this video

The funniest part is that nobody knows that 'laser' is an acronym and funnier still, I often see it misspelt as "lazer" and tbf it looks better with a Z imo. 

[Dan Q]

I use a hard G (/ɡɪf/), because it stands for Graphics Interchange Format. I disagree with its creator's use of a soft G because it's not a... I don't know... Giraffe Interchange Format, is it?

But I don't first think of it as an animation format, because, well... it wasn't! That came much later. I remember the transitional period during which you could make animated GIFs, but some web browsers couldn't yet display them so they'd only show the first frame! You'd think carefully about what the first frame was, then! Also: some browsers supported animation, but not looping animation, so you'd want to think about what your last frame looked like, too!

And even where animation was supported, many early browsers didn't support animation timing: every frame of a GIF would always take 1/10th of a second, no matter what the timing instructions said! Very annoying!

Also: transparency! That was added in the 89a version of the standard, and it was sometimes worth thinking about in the early days of the Web, in case your site visitor didn't support transparency (properly) yet! The way that GIF transparency works, if you don't know, is that one specific color gets nominated as "the transparent one"; it's often magenta, nowadays. But a better-made early GIF would use a color that was similar to the expected background color of the page it was on so that, even if transparency failed, it'd be close.

It's funny: all of the things people think of as "iconic" of what a GIF is... were bolted on later. I wrote a whole blog post about the history of GIFs and how their name has changed meaning, a few years back, if you're interested in a deeper dive!

[Dan Q]

The funniest part is that nobody knows that 'laser' is an acronym

I knew this! Also SCUBA, which stands for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.

As distinct from TUBA, which is Totally Useless Breathing Apparatus, as anybody who's tried to use one in a swimming pool will attest.

[Metropolis]

I personally just say moving images.

[Dan Q]

I personally just say moving images.

Even for the ones that don't move?!

[w8n8]

Gif is gif...    

[inulex]

i used to say jif, but then i had a friend group that bullied me into saying gif...

[TheFrugalGamer]

Definitely a hard "g," for the reasons DanQ mentioned. Also, "JIF" is a peanut butter, not an image format! But my partner disagrees, so we have this argument often.

I imagine archaeologists will be having this same debate many hundreds of years into the future. "The pronunciation of the word was hotly contested at the time..."

[dogbrain]

i think we should all start mispronouncing other file formats... why limit ourselves to only jif?!???!?

jpeg --> jaypeej

png --> pun guh

that's all i can think of for now

[IndigoGolem]

i think we should all start mispronouncing other file formats... why limit ourselves to only jif?!???!?

jpeg --> jaypeej

png --> pun guh

that's all i can think of for now

png is good, but i should point out that the P in jpeg is short for ph. It's not a Joint Potographic Eexperts Jroup.

apng (animated png) is /əpʌŋgə/ (schwa and then png)
svg is /svig/ (IPA ⟨i⟩ is equivalent to English "ee")
xfc (GIMP) is /skf̩t͡ʃ/
css is just a long hiss /s/ (using the fricative value of ⟨c⟩
html sounds like a sneeze, the T is sort of an aspirated dental plosive

[ashParadise]

png --> pun guh

My assistant designer is gonna be so annoyed with me now that I'm calling it pun guh forever 

Fake answer is that I pronounce it with a soft G because that's how the format's creator pronounces it

Real answer is that I pronounce it as jif because I think it sounds better but if someone says it with a hard G then I will know exactly what they mean, care 0%, and let the conversation continue as normal without commenting on it because I don't like being pedantic

[MediocreMetastasis]

i think we should all start mispronouncing other file formats... why limit ourselves to only jif?!???!?

jpeg --> jaypeej

png --> pun guh

that's all i can think of for now

hurr durr six hundos

[Dan Q]

png is good, but i should point out that the P in jpeg is short for ph. It's not a Joint Potographic Eexperts Jroup.

Daaaamn! I'd never thought of that.

In order to be self-consistent (I use a hard-G for GIF because the G stands for Graphics, which has a hard-G)... I guess I'm going to start pronouncing JPEG as Jay-Pheg.