What did the creator of the GIF name them? Imagine if a bunch of people read your name wrong, then when you told them how it’s pronounced said that they don’t care, and your mom was wrong to pronounce your name that way.
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.
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.
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.
What did the creator of the GIF name them? Imagine if a bunch of people read your name wrong, then when you told them how it’s pronounced said that they don’t care, and your mom was wrong to pronounce your name that way.
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.
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!