this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

GIF was pronounced with soft g since it came out, back in the 80s/90s when it was shared on AOL and CompuServe.

FWIW, in the 80s & 90s, everyone I knew pronounced it with a hard G, including folks at computer shows, which my family used to go to frequently.

To me, the soft g 'jif' pronunciation is the new Internet fad, not the other way around.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

https://www.olsenhome.com/gif/compuserve-big.jpg

Since it was announced in 1987, if they mentioned the pronunciation it was soft G. The inventor and CompuServe would tell you it was soft G. CompuServe's applications would tell you if soft G in their docs.

It's even in the documentation of PNG which came out 7 years later that says soft G is correct in GIF, and they wanted people to pronounce PNG as "ping", not "pinj". (Yes, really)

See https://www.olsenhome.com/gif/ for more examples.