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Pronunciation of GIF (en.wikipedia.org)

submitted 3 days ago by can@sh.itjust.works to c/wikipedia@lemmy.world

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No, acronyms don't work that way

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[–] CTDummy@aussie.zone 7 points 3 days ago

Haha using some of the words above I did the same for a mate when we argued about it and constructed a deranged sentence. We eventually settled on it being a pointless argument since gi can make both sounds, forever dooming us to conflict. From the wiki:

In her coverage of Dow's piece, Canadian linguist Gretchen McCulloch theorizes that since the hard and soft g in this context are used with near-equal frequency, when a person first encounters the word GIF, they make a guess akin to flipping a coin by comparing it to other words they have encountered in the past. Once they have a favorite one way or the other, the notion is solidified—leading McCulloch to comment that this "probably means we'll be fighting the gif pronunciation war for generations to come".