this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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Eh, I prefer the descriptivist method of language. It's how language evolves over time.
Comparing it to a personal name is a false equivalence. GIF is an acronym, people could enunciate each letter if they so preferred and it would be more accurate/true to creation than even the creator's opinion of how to pronounce it.
I just don’t think that usual linguistic rules should apply to a thing that a guy literally invented and named.
The person who invented it gets to name it.
Except he didn't invent the words used to name what he invented. If he had just named it gif and pronounced it jif and non of those letters stood for anything I would see your point, but he didn't. He named it graphic interchange format, shortened to gif. That said, who gives a shit pronounce it how you want. Language evolves anyways.
JPHEG
Nobody pronounces it with a hard G because of what the G stands for. Acronyms don't work like that. They do it because a hard G is more common when starting words in English than a soft one.
Sure, but that doesn't change anything in my mind. Descriptivism FTW!
You better be consistent, then! Jfeg!
Huh? I don't follow.
Except... all words are invented by someone, sometime.
It's not a false equivalence. He named it after the penun butter brand. It was specifically named to be pronounced a certain way.
Oh, okay. That only combats my point about it being a false equivalence. At the end of the day, it's an acronym.
I see what you’re saying, and to a point I agree. I see it as people reading it a certain way in their head and becoming attached to how they think it should sound. This happens often because English words especially can have all manner of exceptions to the usual rules of spelling and grammar. There is nothing embarrassing about reading, or at least there shouldn’t be. What I DO find embarrassing is when people find out that they’re pronouncing something differently and flat out disagree with the world about its actual pronounciation.
Man, you must be embarrassed all the time when you hear British or American people talk.
Somehow the world can survive and we can understand one another with very different pronunciations of words like "Aluminum", but this... THIS WILL NOT STAND!
I mean, it's only embarrassing for them - if they want to be loud, proud, and wrong that's okay.
But at the same time, they may well set the trend for how it's pronounced in the future.
Lord knows, waDer (i.e. water) started somewhere...
Edit: I'm guessing I offended someone by implying that saying 'wadder' is the wrong way to say water, hahaha.