GIF pronunciation

[Controversial question](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_GIF), but both are commonly used.

This is quite an old debate. The creator of it apparently said it was JIF. Either pronunciation is acceptable. I and most people I've known from the US say "gif" with the \[g\] sound as in "gift". Even some people have made fun of the debate saying it should be pronounced like \[ʒ a ɪ f\] with the "g" \[ʒ\] being pronounced like the g in "genre" or the "s" in "measure".

This came up on Jeopardy! a few nights ago. The contestant answered "jiff" and Ken added "giff."

The creator named if “jiff” but it seems the majority now say it “giff” The name was meant as a deliberate riff on the peanut butter brand “Jif.” At the time of the invention of the gif, the peanut butter had an advertising slogan “Choosy moms choose Jif.” The CompuServe Engineers riffed on that with “Choosy developers choose gif.”

The guy who created it says it’s jif. A lot of people use the other pronunciation anyway, but the technically correct pronunciation is jif.

Both are acceptable

In my opinion, if you need to spell it 'JIF' to ensure people pronounce it 'correctly' then it's wrong. In English, G can be hard or soft but surely if most people say GIF and not JIF then surely it's GIF. In regards to the creator saying it's JIF, I don't think that really carries much weight. For example, Mount Everest is named after Sir George Everest. However, his name is pronounced EVE-REST not EV-ER-EST.

Am I the only the one who says the individual letters? Like, G-I-F.

Y'know what? I think I'm just gonna start pronouncing it "Yif." It's been too long since I've seen this debate.

I first heard the word GIF somewhere around 1993, and it was *always* pronounced *jiff*. It wasn't until 10-15 years later that *giff* started creeping in, and seems to be the more common pronunciation these days. It's a fact of language that pronunciation changes, but the fact that 1) *giff* didn't exist or was the extreme minority for the first decade of the acronym, 2) the creator of the format gets to choose the pronunciation (*jiff*), and 3) *jiff* just...sounds better, all mean that it's still *jiff* for me.

Hard Guh. It’s short for Graphics Interchange Format. It’s not Dzhrafics after all! I will accept no argument. So ner.

Clearly theres debate, as you can see. But I would like to add that in modern english the letter "g" generally defaults to a "guh" sound, not a "juh" sound. It can make the j sound in some circumstances, but when by itself it is more accurately described by the g sound. Acronyms just use whatever sounds better, but mostly default to pronouncing individual letters as the bare letter they are, rather than a representation of the word they came from

Various people will argue for either one being correct, and there is no consensus. I personally hear the hard-G version far more often (and that is what I prefer myself), but either one is fine.

Some people pronounce it "gif" with a hard "g" but they are wrong and bad people and you should not trust them

Either is correct