How do you pronounce GIF?

[quaoar]

Is it Gif as in gift, with a hard G? Or is it Gif as in Jiff, with a soft G?

I've googled this to no end and found arguments on both sides.

[Rue]

1. To the best of my knowledge,

you pronounce it like the peanut butter--Jiff.

[TahitiNut]

31. That's how the inventors pronounced it .. with a 'g' as in 'giraffe.'

Read all about it here ... http://tinyurl.com/87c7r

The GIF graphics file format was invented by CompuServe in 1987. In the years since, a debate has been raging as to the correct way to pronounce "GIF": like "jif", or with a hard 'g' as in "gift" as a majority of Mac users seem to prefer. With this page I intend to clear this up once and for all...

It's pronounced like "jif". Period. The end. That's final. End of story.

[quaoar]

35. So who says the inventors get to decide?

[Radio_Lady]

56. I didn't know it was invented -- I call it "G" as in "Gift" --

.gif (as in Gift)

.jpg (JAY-peg)

.tif (as in Tiff)

By the way, I'm not going to change my way of doing things!

[madeline_con]

2. Since it means Graphics Interchange Format....

I'd personally go with a hard "G" sound. GIF. :)

[Lex]

4. Yep, me too. nt

[helderheid]

15. me too

[benddem]

17. me too

never heard anyone say Jif.

[MrSlayer]

3. Gif as in Gift.

That's how I say it anyway.

[Wetzelbill]

5. I always thought it was with a hard G

[RoyGBiv]

6. Hard "G"

Based on what it means, that's the appropriate way to pronounce it.

[amitten]

7. Choosy moms choose GIF. n/t

[Radio_Lady]

57. Don't get your peanut butter mixed up with your graphics. It's JIF...

smooth or crunchy?

[Speck Tater]

8. I pronounce it the RIGHT way.

hard 'G' as in "gastroenterologist".

If God had meant it to be pronounced like the peanut butter he would have created it spelled "Jiff".

[rzemanfl]

9. This is great, I see an opening here. By the way, my name is

Karl Rove, and I work for the great unificator in Washington.

[madeline_con]

24. Wouldn't that be GUIF....

with an entirely different pronunciation?

[pitohui]

10. i pronounce it jiff

as it jiffey peanut butter

am i wrong?

[walldude]

11. Most computer people I know use the soft "g"

Jiff...
Gonna look this up

Looks like you are right, from dictionary.com:

entries found for gif.
GIF ( P ) Pronunciation Key (jif, gif)

A service mark used for a raster-based color graphics file format, often used on the World Wide Web to store graphics

[TahitiNut]

32. That's correct. (See above.)

[leftofthedial]

12. gift-ish

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

13. Actually (and this is a little-known fact), the "g" in GIF is silent...

:evilgrin:

All kidding aside, when people call them "jiffs," I wanna CLOCK 'em.

I take this stuff SERIOUSLY.

:evilgrin:

[madeline_con]

16. The word "graphic" is silent....

All righty, then. ;)

I say "Jay-peg" for the other one, FWIW. Does that bug you? :popcorn:

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

19. No, I can handle "Jay-peg"...

...but CMYK is "See-Emm-Why-Kay," NOT "Smick."

You hear someone say THAT and you KNOW you're dealin' with a POSER.

:evilgrin:

[madeline_con]

21. LOL! n/t

[quaoar]

22. I've never heard SMICK

Good thing too. I might have to kill someone.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

23. I just made it up...please don't kill me...it's CHRISTMAS!

:evilgrin:

[kliljedahl]

26. No it's not, Christmas isn't for two days

Keith’s Barbeque Central

[shenmue]

14. I always say "giff" with the g as in "gut"

:shrug:

Or else I spell out the letters.

[PDJane]

18. My son and his friends

the geek squad use GIF......hard G.

I have to admit that's the way I've always heard it pronounced, so I've never given it a second thought.

[rzemanfl]

20. JPG n/t.

[baldguy]

25. I spell it out: G - I - F

or J - P - G

[IDemo]

27. It's 'jiff' as in the peanut butter

But save your graphics files in 'JAY-PEGG' format, just to be sure..

[w13rd0]

28. It is...

...

JEEF

jee-eye-f

but people just drop the "i" sound, so it's JEEF.

Glad to help out.

[quaoar]

29. I think you just made that up

I've never heard it pronounced JEEF, as in JEEP. Jiff as in the peanut butter, but not JEEF.

[qnr]

30. Somewhere around here, I have a dump from Compuserve ca. 1982 or 83. They

created it, and in their blurb, it was a hard G.

[TahitiNut]

33. Wrong. Twice.

First, it was invented by CompuServe in 1987, not 1982 or 1983.
Second, it was pronounced (according to the inventors) as 'jif.'

See http://tinyurl.com/87c7r

[qnr]

40. Sorry, you're wrong yourself. That is GIF87, the original GIF was

much earlier, and monochromatic only, and used LZW. I still have 5-1/4" floppies with GIF images on them. Perhaps they used the same name, but that was NOT the original GIF. I used to use it with my 8-bit Ataris.

Although, I was a sysop, so maybe I was using something that wasn't available generally, I don't remember.

[qnr]

43. Here's a link:

-bilder.de%2Flexikon%2Fgif.html&langpair=de%7Cen&hl=en&safe=off&c2coff=1&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools

I assure you, CIS, in 1983, used a hard G - regardless though, I've always used jiff

[patriotvoice]

34. "Jif" - See the GIF pronounciation page

http://www.olsenhome.com/gif/

[quaoar]

37. Well, a poll was taken

and the hard G won:

http://www.say-so.org/view/yn1evcqb

[patriotvoice]

41. Polling the ignorant leads to ignorant results.

That isn't a criticism to those who use the velar form; it's simply a statement that most are ignorant of the actual specifications because most are armchair computer scientists, at best. Those of us with ACM memberships don't use the velar form.

[quaoar]

42. Popular usage is what dictionaries use

to decide proper pronounciations of new words.

BTW, GIF is an anacronym -- an acronym that is more well known than the phrase it stands for -- like SCUBA or LASER.

[IDemo]

45. Then you probably and incorrectly believe "issue" = "problem"

[quaoar]

46. That's bizarre

Where do you get that from? LOL

[IDemo]

49. Your clinginess to an incorrect pronunciation is bizarre

[UncleSepp]

58. Your proscriptive linguistics are bizarre

Seriously, that's just strange. Language is as it is used. Language is fluid. Pronunciation of words varies through time and place, and there are variants.

[patriotvoice]

47. Reference?

I can fathom that dictionaries use popular pronunciation for entries, as well as phonological rules, but I'd like to see a reference that specifically says this.

Also, I think calling GIF an anacronym is a bit harsh. Most computer scientists with whom I work know what GIF stands for.

[quaoar]

48. Computer scientists are not the only people

who use the term. I'm an editor and I use it all the time. I frequently have to try to explain to newspaper readers who are sending up photos that they must be either in JPEG or GIF format.

[patriotvoice]

50. Of course they're not,

but an anachronym is a word that few or no people remember what it stands for, which I think is a harsh classification for GIF. Of course, I do know what LASER, SCUBA, RADAR, MODEM, all stand for, so maybe I'm just part of a circle of exception.

[IDemo]

36. "JIFF" it is

http://www.olsenhome.com/gif/

[DS1]

38. I pronounce it 'piece of crap transparency'

[Omphaloskepsis]

39. I call them pings...

Portable Network Graphics

[Greyhound]

52. Isn't .png a different format? I don't think it supports transparencies.

[ghostsofgiants]

62. PNG supports full alpha transparency and was created to replace GIF

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphic

[Omphaloskepsis]

64. ding.. we have a winner..

I don't use gif's anymore. Now Microsoft needs to grow up and fucking support them. And proper CSS too.. Fuck.

[ghostsofgiants]

65. No kidding...

Non-standard-compliant fucks.

[Greyhound]

69. Thanks for the info. Don't even get me started on what shitheads

M$ are, I've hated them with a passion since they killed DrDOS.

[trackfan]

44. gee-eye-eff is the only way I have ever said it

I treat is as an abbreviation rather than an acronym

[Greyhound]

51. On the west coast since late 80's, I've heard hard G almost exclusively nt

[Liberal Veteran]

53. Jay Peg

Cause I hate GIF files!

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

54. I refuse to use gif files

In case you weren't aware of it, there was a great controversy surronding Unisys's decision to try to enforce a charge on all web sites that used files in the gif format. This arose from their hold on the LZW compression scheme that is used in various graphic formats, including (mostly) gif and also compressed tiff files.

Although this happened a few years back, and they were never able to really enforce it and collect any money from anybody, many graphics designers abandoned gif. It was made easier when the png format was finalized- it's superior in any case due to the fact that gif only gives you 256 colors when png gives you 24 bit true color.

It's an interesting bit of trivia, in any case.

Read more about it at http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/Gif/Gif.html

[ChoralScholar]

55. I usually pronounce the letters

jee-eye-eff

It's a G-I-F file.

[RoyGBiv]

59. Geezus ...

I just now checked on the threads I'd posted in, to see what was happening, and I must say this one is, well, almost funny.

*Some* people are taking this *way* too seriously. Reminds me of a debate I once witnessed between two linguists over split infinitives. It was interesting, but you'd think they were arguing about which one got to live.

Pronounce it however the hell you want. If you're talking to someone and they know what you're talking about regardless of the pronunciation, your use of language has served its purpose. Sheesh.

Oh, and while I'm here, you're all heathens. It's pronounced "Throat-warbler Mangrove."

[njdemocrat106]

60. I always pronounced it "gee-eye-eff".

Are you telling me I've been pronouncing it incorrectly for the past 12 years? (That's how long I've been using an IBM PC-compatible, BTW). :)

[ghostsofgiants]

61. I pronounce it "ping"

[Omphaloskepsis]

66. Right on..

Ever play with image creation and php..?

Fun, Fun, Fun... Some sloppy code..

<?php

$r = rand(0, 255);
$g = rand(0, 255);
$b = rand(0, 255);

$rb = rand(0, 255);
$gb = rand(0, 255);
$bb = rand(0, 255);

$img_number = imagecreate(100,40);
$white = imagecolorallocate($img_number,255,255,255);
$black = imagecolorallocate($img_number,0,0,0);
$random_color = imagecolorallocate($img_number,$r,$b,$g);
$random_colorb = imagecolorallocate($img_number,$rb,$bb,$gb);

imagefill($img_number,0,0,$random_color);
ImageRectangle($img_number,3,3,97,37,$random_colorb);

header("Content-type:image/jpeg");
imagejpeg($img_number);

?>

[ghostsofgiants]

67. I know fuck all about PHP

So I've never tried it before, haha.

[Omphaloskepsis]

68. Really.. PHP is a huge pile of shit.

Don't ever bother learning it.. Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, put me on Rails...

</fanboy> PHP is OK But god damn it sucks.. ROR has fantastic AJAX hooks. Just aargh. I hate PHP.. Thinking about it makes me insane.

[MrScorpio]

63. I say it as I would say "gift"

And damn straight, I'm another mac user