Nice gimmick. Counterpoint: this GIF of some giggly git giving a gilt gizzard and a large haggis to a giddy girl named Gidget. (GIF omitted because I made it tf up). Incidentally, not a single one of your examples included “gi” followed by “f”.

Incidentally, I pronounce it “jif”, I just think appealing to English as if it had actual rules is insane.

the "literally means figuratively now" argument is stupid, saying it in non literal scenarios is used as hyperbole. You would never say "I'm figuratively dying of thirst"

the "literally means figuratively now" argument is stupid, saying it in non literal scenarios is used as hyperbole. You would never say "I'm figuratively dying of thirst"

That's french tho NRJ ~ energie

the "literally means figuratively now" argument is stupid, saying it in non literal scenarios is used as hyperbole. You would never say "I'm figuratively dying of thirst"

Jod made the Jiraffes and the Giraffes and they were best friends. But then one Jiraffe found God and he spited Jod and all the Giraffes with all his might.

Yeah I pulled it out originally because I was tired of people saying that "gi" is almost always hard g, and I don't think the lack of f makes a difference (because English spelling rules are silly, like you say. In the other thread I mentioned that just because the word "women" exists we don't pronounce every "wom" sequence with a short i sound).

The closest word to gif is gift for me. I think that's the conclusion most come to and why the hard G is the most common.

A pronunciation that is common and widespread becomes the correct way to say something. Languages are constantly evolving and in movement. They don't care for what a few or even the words creator want.

I always felt like this was a weird argument. Language is always in flux. It's why the definition of "literally" now includes a definition that it's a synonym of "figuratively" since people used it that was so much.

If enough people think gif should be pronounced like "god", then it should. If the "jif" pronunciation has enough people who use it, then that's valid, too. Hell, if a bunch of people started legitimately saying it should be a homonym with the word "plankton," even that'd be valid.

Words are about conveying meaning; the same meaning is intended with both pronunciations, and understood by the people hearing it. There's nothing to argue about.

Both pronunciations already had solid handholds in the zeitgeist by 2016, it was named 30 years before that. I'd argue the 50/50 split you provide nothing but hearsay for is proof that the hard g pronunciation is more intuitive as it was originally marketed and advertised with the soft g (and a pronunciation guide for the slogan as folks have helpfully pointed out). By your and Tom Scott's reasoning, everyone exposed to it then would use the soft g, but people in the decades after who knew nothing of the cheap marketing stunt would inevitably pronounce it however made the most sense to them. Thus the hard g pronunciation.

Now for my own personal hearsay, it's never been anywhere close to 50/50 and it's gotten more and more unbalanced towards the hard g over time. In 2011 it was maybe 70/30 hard g/soft g, now it feels like 95/5 ‍️. But again, that's all obviously irrelevant due to it's subjectivity.

.gif came first and no one uses .jif anymore because there are better options.

If you read my name, and I pointed out that your pronunciation was wrong, would you tell me my pronunciation is incorrect due to pronunciation rules rather than how my parents named me?

Edit: and I'll just note, a soft g is very well defined, and is usually behind an e, i, or y, while a hard g is typically behind an a, o, or u, but let's focus on the whole "who gets to choose how a name is pronounced" bit for a moment.

I mean, they got to name it... How it sounds is part of that

How it sounds is a lot more related to basic prononciation rules then the arbitrary whims of the inventor.

In this case, he chose to name it GIF which is, believe it or not, pronounced gif in the English language. If he wanted to have it sound like jif, he should have named it JIF.

Not to say that we don't sometimes disregard the rules for certain words. Ultimately a words meaning and prononciation is collectively decided through usage. I think collectively, we have chosen to ignore the creators lack of basic linguistic skills and prononce the word how it's written.

and the company “Nike” is yelling “no it’s Nike! Like the god!”

So in this example, are they yelling it like their namesake is actually pronounced ( [niː́kɛː] , the i like in "flee", the e like in "bad"), or in the english pronounciation (i like in "die", e like in "flee")?

The P in JPEG stands for photographic so I guess we shall pronounce it "jayfeg" based on that logic.

/s

Descriptive linguistic opinion: both the hard and soft G pronunciations are used, with the hard G being more common, but I like the soft G and use it myself.

There exist countries where Nike rhymes with the name Mike in their language. I'm unwilling to tell people they're not allowed to pronounce it the way their majority does.