• RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I went looking for it, and apparently you’re right. He said “Jif”. He’s either trolling or being obstinate. People don’t see it that way, especially seeing as it’s the hard “G” from “Graphical” in the acronym. So he’s applying a pronunciation rule of soft G when followed with “i” when used in a word to an acronym - and acronyms aren’t words (noted: they can become treated as such).

    GIF is not a word. So soft “g” when followed by “i” does not apply.

      • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I went and looked it up.

        Acronym is the most correct term. GIF can be an initialism or an acronym, however it becomes an acronym when we pronounce it as a word.

        I’m not going to get into a debate over it obeying word rules when it starts as an initialism. That’s for scholars and asklemmy shenanigans.

    • Rhaedas@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      The funny thing is that even though there are people on both sides dead set they are right, if they hear someone say the opposite pronunciation they still understand what the speaker is referring to. So there’s absolutely no context lost, it’s just preference, and I have a feeling given the age of the name GIF those preferences are very regional, as the internet had not become a national/international thing yet.