Reader Comments...

If you have a comment, send me an E-mail at: If it's interesting or funny, I'll reprint it on this page. If you still insist on pronouncing it like "gift" and don't feel like E-mailing me a reason... well then, you can jo gump in a lake, you gerk! Newest comment added 3/11/07. To view the latest comments, scroll to the bottom! Strong Bad calls us "Nerds" (thanks, JaguaR2D2!): Phillip Burgess writes: Ahhh, good, someone with their head screwed on right. Anyone who pronounces "GIF" with a hard G simply does not understand computer programmers (and any programmers who still insist on this silly pronunciation are simply unfit). No *decent* coder would pass up an opportunity to inflict a horrid pun on the world. And seeing as peanut butter is one of the principle three programmer foods (the other two being Pepsi and nacho cheese Doritos), the reference is immediately obvious. The "acronym theory," that a hard G should be used because it's "Graphics" and not "Jraphics," simply does not hold water. If acronyms were always to be pronounced from their source words rather than as an independent new word, then by this very arrangement, "JPEG" would be pronounced "JFEG." Just to give these people a taste of their own medicine... I've started pronouncing "JPEG" with a hard G. Brenda Harrison writes: The "Correct Pronunciation of 'GIF'" page made me laugh for a good 5 minutes. It reminds me of the age old debate of "How to pronounce 'Geocities.'" That argument ended up with someone actually calling the Geocities offices to see how the phone operators answered the phone. ("Hello, Geo Cities," not "Hello, Geocities [g-os-ities]," just so you know. You probably already do, anyways.) Sam Mefford writes: Thanks for your page on the pronunciation of 'gif'! I'm glad to have been vindicated by evidence! Just thought I'd point out that in the english language, when a g is followed by an a, o, or u, it is supposed to be hard. When followed by an i or e, it is supposed to be soft. Therefore I never had any question that it was pronounced 'jif', despite the fact that everyone around disagreed. Rita Minnichsoffer rebuts: I'd like to know what happens when you give a gekko to geese, or get a gift from a girl, then... Talbott Crowell (who apparently has a dictionary and lots of free time) also rebuts: I did not know the English language had such rules, from now on I will pronounce the following words with a soft "J" instead of a hard "G" Jilligans Island Jibbon Viper birtday jift feeling jiddy jiggle (laugh) Jilbert (cartoon) fish jills the Jideon Bible you are jilty of the crime a woman's jirdle jirl scout cookies jive me some jibblets and jizzards Pronounce GIF as you may. Clay McGovern writes: Although an interesting diversion, the roots of a word and its original pronunciation are completely irrelevant to common usage. Words have lives of their own. The creators of a word have little control over pronunciation beyond their original act of creation. Words are meant only for communication. The salient question is on "Do you understand my meaning when I say 'GIF'?" If the answer is "Yes." Then the dispute over "proper" pronunciation is absolutely absurd. Very, very, few people pronounce GIF with a soft g. Those who do are understood as well as those who don't. Where is the problem with that... Best regards, Clay (with a "c" as in "cat") Erik J. Macki writes: ... English words beginning in "gi-" "ge-" or "gy-" that are not of Romance origin (French, Italian, etc.) are *all* pronounced with a velar (hard) "g." It is probably due to a misunderstanding of this principle that led the inventor of the GIF to pronounce it with an affricate (soft) "g" in the first place. This is why a native speaker of English would intuitively pronounce a word spelled "GIF" with a velar (hard) "g" without knowing otherwise. This is more consistent with all English-speakers' natural, internal morphophonology, and that is why the velar pronunciation is so widespread. Nonetheless, spelling is often irrelevant to pronunciation in English: with words like "tough," through," "gift," "gypsy," "egg," "gem," and "massage," no one need waste any effort creating logic about how the letter "g" "ought" to be pronounced in English words: there simply is no logic. One must go by usage. English is full of words whose pronunciation deviates from prescribed standards--precisely because usage, and not prescriptive rules, dictates what is "correct." No amount of arguing from pundits and word-coiners can ever change this! I suspect from informally surveys that the velar pronunciation in "GIF" is actually more common than the affricate ("soft") pronunciation--a point of view validated by the very existance of your Web site--and as such the velar variant is at least a "correct" alternative if not the more common and thus "more correct" form entirely. Thanks, Erik (Ed: Whoa, that's over my head dude... you lost me at "morphophonology"!) Dean Hutchings writes: For years I have been telling people the correct pronunciation of GIF image files. They ALWAYS claimed I was wrong. I thought I had read somewhere that the creator of the format pronounced it like "jif" but could never find the proof. Now I have the ammo I need to finally prove my point! Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! Nathan Gaines writes: I must say that your page on the correct pronunciation of .GIF is the most complete, well-researched, and convincing document I have ever seen on the subject. Now could someone please tell me which of the three pronunciations of LINUX is correct? Take care, Nathan Gaines Rob Ford writes: "Jiff"...."Giff"....they're both wrong. The "G" in "GIF" is silent. And silence is Jolden. So sayeth me. (Rob was also nice enough to provide the nifty animated GIF logo up top. Thanks, Rob!) Cole Hewitt writes: Maybe GIF should be pronounced "zhif" with a French accent. Then we could end this controversy. Steve Bennett writes: I saw your site on the proper pronunciation of GIF and have to categorically state it's pronounced with the soft G as in Jif. Back in 1987, I was an assitant Sysop on Compuserve, in the Comics and Animation forum, and also in the AmigaArts forum, and as such was given the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of GIF development. (GIF was a godsend, especially for the Comics forum which was dealing with umpteen jillion different incompatible graphics formats...) Days after the format was announced and the first programs released by Compuserve, I was one of the first to post new GIF code, and wrote an Amiga program to display GIF images. (I actually don't recall if mine was the first 3rd party program uploaded -- if not, it was by a matter of a few days at most...) I called that program GIFFY because I had completely rewritten the decoder code (still in use by a few programs out there...:) and made it MUCH faster. (Later, I wrote GIFFY2, and HAMGIF...) We all pronounced it "Jif" at the time, and the name "GIFFY" seemed the obvious and clear choice of name. It never even occurred to me that someone might pronounce it with the hard G until the mid 1990s. Seeing your site was a breath of nostalgia for me -- I wonder if there's an archive of those old Compuserve forums anywhere around. So much great stuff was there. Alas, I suspect it's all lost in the maelstrom... JaguaR2D2 writes: I thought this might make a good link on the GIF Pronunciation Page: http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail51.html It is a cartoon in which, at one point, the character Strong Bad says: "Okay, next on the checklist: lots of animated GIFs! {pronounces it /gifs/; stops typing} or... GIFs... {pronounces it /jifs/} or however you say it. I don't know. I heard a couple of nerds arguing about it one time."