Memes

• Geography
• Geology
• Giraffe
• Generous

Just a few examples that come to mind. Additionally, the pronunciation of the individual words included in an acronym DOES NOT determine the pronunciation of that acronym. See SCUBA as an example.

Obviously it's pronounced the same as the the "g" in "gigantic"

I used to be adament about gif with a hard G until I had a coworker insist that sudo was pronounced soodoo rather than pseudo. like yeah, I know it stands for sUpEr uSeR dO but you can never get me to not say it the other way.

Gerry the gentle giraffe went to the gym with the generous gem of a gymnast Geoffrey (the giant ginger who wears gentlemen’s hair gel and studies geometry). Genius!

It is gif

The creator of the format says "JIF", so I say it as well.

gust jet over it.

The creator of the format, Steve Wihite, says it’s pronounced as JIF, but personally I still say GIF out of habit.

https://www.cnn.com/2013/05/22/tech/web/pronounce-gif/index.html

Who fucking cares

Well, you see, the g in gif stands for "graphics" which is ultimately from Greek "γραφικός," and because this is the 21st century, γ in front of a close front vowel is pronounced as neither /g/ nor /d͡ʒ/ but rather /ʝ/, which is pronounced a bit like English's y, so in its purest rendition gif is really pronounced "yiff", which doubles as homage to the online communities that OP frequents.

Gesus Christ

Blame english instead of people probouncing the wrong way. English don't give a fucking clue about pronounciation only using letters.

So I can pronounce Blamei as Lemmy. [B silent, a - e sound, mm and m can be pronounced same, and ei can be read as y]

I switch up my pronunciation on a whim to cause maximum chaos.

Good, the blood of Eden shall rise

Looks like the Jif crowds downvote bombing, yikes.

So I’m upvoting everyone, let’s try and keep this civil and downvotes out of this! Both sides are technically correct, correcting each other is divisive and playing into trolling.

I’ve heard it both ways

Zod must be pissed.

Some arguments that people keep bringing up that are all wrong and carry zero weight in this discussion:

• The creator says it's JIF
• It's like Gift, but without the T
• It's like Giraffe, but without the raffe
• It stands for "Graphics Interchange Format" so it's GIF
• My dictionary says it's GIF
• My dictionary says it's JIF
• Obama says it's GIF
• Giphy says it's GIF

Ultimately, language is very dynamic and changes all the time. Words change their spelling, their meaning and their pronunciation too. Dictionaries tend to lag behind a little bit, but the fact that they publish a new version every year signifies how much languages change. The creator of a word can coin a pronunciation, but ultimately has zero control over whether it will be adopted or not.

So therefore whichever way most people actually pronounce it is by definition the correct pronunciation. And the polls done on this subject are pretty clear, showing that GIF is the preferred pronunciation, chosen by up to 70% in North America and over 80% in Australia and the UK. This depends on which poll you use, but in general the split is at least 2:1 in favour of GIF, and over time the usage of GIF tends to trend up over time.

So ultimately, the one true pronunciation is GIF, as decided by the people as a whole. However, most dictionaries do list JIF as an accepted alternative pronunciation, due to the not insignificant minority pronouncing it that way.

In other words, just choose which pronunciation you prefer, and use that. And try to avoid the pointless debates people like to have on the subject, filled with arguments that don't carry any weight whatsoever.