The pronunciation of the popular image file, "GIF,"
(an acronym standing for "Graphics Interchange Format") has been a
subject of intense debate over the last few years. There are those who argue
that the "G" is soft, choosing to pronounce it like the ubiquitous
mass-marketed, over-sugared peanut butter, and others who maintain that it
should be pronounced with a hard "G," like "gift" minus the
"t". And then there are others who wonder what the hell these geeks
are arguing about.
Well, I happened to be one of those geeks and I will say
that arguing about minutia is a proud past time of geeks everywhere, and we are
not ashamed of this. In addition, I will propose that accuracy and correctness
are still important, in spite of what an increasing number of people seem to
believe these days.
Some have tried to say that both pronunciations are
acceptable. I disagree. GIF is a recent entry
to the lexicon, so it has not been subject to the same linguistic evolution
that older words were, with their pronunciations changing over time and being
twisted with regional accents. The word "aluminum" may sound
completely different on either side of the Atlantic Ocean, but there should be
agreement on GIF.
So how do we decide who's right? For me, it's simple. Go to
the source. Steve Wilhite, the inventor of the GIF declared in a comment to the New York Times in 2013: “The Oxford
English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations... They are wrong. It is a soft 'G,'
pronounced 'jif.' End of story."
That should be the end of the story, right? Yet, people come
out of the woodwork to contradict the man on how to say the name of his own
invention. Really? Would you go up to a mother and tell her that she is
mispronouncing the name of her child?
Personally, I always said it as "jif." I don't
remember anyone telling me that was how is was said. That is simply how it
sounded in my head when I read it off the screen (if it was "Graphics
Interchange Format File" or "GIFF," I would definitely pronounce
it with a hard "G.") But I must be a weirdo because culture writer Joanna Brenner declared in a Newsweek article last year, that "our brains logically just want to pronounce it
with a hard G."
So I guess I do not have a logical brain, at least as far as
Brenner would define it. And, evidently,
that is the case for many others as well. The fact that this argument rages on is
a testament to that fact.
To be fair, Brenner does make a compelling point in her
article when she asserts that "every word that starts with G, then a
vowel, then an F, is pronounced with a hard G... For example: Gaffe. Gift.
Guff. Guffaw."
I am tentatively willing to concede that point, even though
I cannot attest to the veracity of this claim. I do not have a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary to pore
through to find a counter-example. All I can respond with is that English is a
highly irregular and elastic language, that there is a first time for
everything, and that this linguistic observation is not enough to dissuade me
from my immediate impulse.
The biggest argument that I hear all the time, though, is
that the "G" stands for "Graphic," and thus should be
pronounced with a hard "G." Mic drop.
I will admit it. That one had me stumped for a while, but the
other day I realized something. Yes, GIF is an acronym, and acronyms can get
tricky. Even looking at acronyms of other file formats, we can see how the
rules of pronunciation can be fluid. JPEG (short for "Joint Photographic
Experts Group") is pronounced "JAY-Peg," and not
"juh-PEG." To be fair, two consonants together can make things
difficult, and JPEG is really a compound of an initialism (like
"BBC") and an acronym. The pronunciation is merely something that is
easy to say and easy on the ear.
GIF (consonant-vowel-consonant) is relatively
straightforward, though, and follows the definition from Merriam-Webster, being
" a word (such as NATO, radar, or laser) formed from the initial letter or
letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term."
Examining the examples provided in that definition, one
would immediately find that the pronunciation of acronyms are unrelated to the
sounds that the letters made in the original words. For example, though the
"A" in NATO represents the word "Atlantic" (as in "North
Atlantic Treaty Organization"), it is not pronounced as such. The
"A" in "Atlantic" is pronounced as an open front unrounded
vowel, the same sound as in "at" or "apple." However, the
acronym, NATO, is pronounced "NAY-to." The letter "A"
sounds quite differently in the acronym from the way it sounds in the original
word.
While we're at it, let's look briefly at the other two
examples in the Merriam-Webster definition. We pronounce "Radar" (RAdio
Detection And Ranging) as "REY-dahr,"
but if one would pronounce the word with the second a representing the word
"and," it would sound more like "rey-DARE." Breaking down
"Laser," normally pronounced "LEY-zer," given that the
"E" represents the word "emission," it would be
pronounced "lahy-ZEER. "
So even though these are vowel sounds and not consonants that
are being twisted around, I still will put forth that within this specific
published definition of the word, acronym, there is evidence that the pronunciation
is independent of the original words.
You may say that I have not proven myself completely right,
and I will respond by saying that I don't have to. In this case, all I have to
do is prove that I'm not wrong. And I think that even if I may not have completely
discredited them, I have at least challenged most of the arguments that say that
"jif" is not a viable pronunciation. Given that, I think maybe it's
time to drop the arrogance and defer to the designer.
Get my gist?
(Now for those who would dismiss my analysis by scoffing and
saying that I have too much time on my hands, I am issuing a preliminary middle
finger.)
