History has seen too many great debates – was Pandit Nehru right in accepting the terms of partition in 1947? Was Dom Cobb dreaming at the end of Inception? And since the invention of the personal computer in the later stages of the 20th Century – how do we pronounce the image file extension ‘GIF’?
So what is the actual pronunciation?
Any word that begins with a ‘g’ and ends with a ‘f’ is pronounced the usual way with a hard g . As in – Gift, Gaffe, Guffaw.
Which is why, using common sense the pronunciation of ‘GIF’ should be using a hard G. Like saying Gift, without the ‘T’.
Why does the whole word pronounce ‘GIF’ with a soft G?
The creator of the GIF image format, Steve Wilhite of CompuServe, when deciding on the pronunciation , said he deliberately chose to echo the American peanut butter brand, Jif.
However, GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format. So like ‘JPEG’ stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, and we see that it is pronounced as ‘jay-peg’ and not as ‘jay-feg’. Which is we should pronounce the hard g in ‘Graphics’ to say ‘GIF’.
So what now?
Now you can go ahead and pronounce it the way you feel comfortable. But just don’t give those of us who pronounce it the correctly, a hard time. Ciao!