this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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Pronunciation of words is decided by consensus - and while of course people mispronounce things, what that means is, they pronounce it differently from the accepted cultural norm.
We don't get all in a knot because Americans prove things differently from British people - even though they originally set the rules for English. And we don't pronounce things the way we do because George Washington (being analogous to wilhite (or whatever his name was)) told us to; we pronounce things as we do because of cultural consensus.
Wilhite's intention was literally to use the name recognition of the peanut butter to further his own success - which, like, who cares - but the simple fact that he made that decision (and to be clear, regardless of our opinion on copyright, is a bad way to make the decision) strongly implies that he was aware that his pronunciation was unnatural.
The fact that this conversation even comes up is proof that culturally we reject wilhite's pronunciation. It's a lost battle - the only reason I get involved in these threads is because I have a hard time watching the same 3 talking points (on both sides) and the same 3 rebuttals - all of which attempt seem to use facts and logic to determine "correct" pronunciation - when the truth is, the pronunciation has already been decided, and soft-G pronounces deserve to understand it.
The conversation exists to correct people who only ever read it, not because people reject the pronunciation rather they are unaware of it
So your argument is actually that people who pronounce it with a hard G have just never heard anyone say it.
And we're taking about dot-g-i-f, the format that is hugely shared as memes and as reactions in chats, a form so well known that it's at Kleenex level of awareness - awareness that exceeds itself - ie, all other variants of this format (apng, animated webp, even webm) are called gifs.
And you're saying that most people, which is, given the prevalence of gifs, probably most of our species at this point - most of the sentient life forms in our solar system are aware of this format's name... But we've just never heard anyone say it. Except for a small, vocal minority - who exist mostly on the Internet and are deeply online. Those are the only people who have heard it said out loud.
And, in that impossible scenario, most of our species - who have, again, never heard it said it loud - billions of people - all, independently, came up with the same, supposedly incorrect, pronunciation.
That's your argument? I feel like your case would be stronger without it.
It's like intentionally taking a Principal Skinner stance - everyone else on earth is wrong. Except, at least Skinner was oblivious.
There's simply no justification for the jif pronunciation. There's an explanation - ie, because the creator of the format wanted to float his success on the back of a peanut butter brand. And it didn't even work - no one calls it "jif" and yet it's probably got better name recognition than the peanut butter. But - even as weak as that explanation is, an explanation is not a justification. A justified pronunciation - even if it's different from the original pronunciation, is one people natively come up with, and yet is always the same.
The ones that have heard it pronounce it jif
I don’t see why you’re so insistent on being wrong
When I hear someone mispronounce gif as jif, I tend to know exactly what type of person they are.
That's you. That's what you sound like.
You literally thought that most of the species knew what gifs were
Still do. To be clear, I'm talking about the human species, not like moths or turtles or something. Smart phones are pretty common, actually.
A lot of people would use the term video and for instance imgur uses mp4s (hence audio)