It might be one of the biggest debates of the digital age — how in all of cyberspace are we supposed to pronounce “GIF?”
Since the creation of the animated loop now an essential part of meme culture, the GIF has been pronounced two ways: with a hard G (like gift) or a soft G like “jif” — yes, the peanut butter. The inventor of the graphic, Steve Wilhite, specifically used JIF peanut butter to name, pronounce and promote his creation, so many committed computer engineers stick with that pronunciation.
The rest of the world, however, does not. The hard g GIF is just the most logical, comfortable and widely accepted way to say it.
The website “How to Really Pronounce GIF” has been around since late 2013 to explain the history of the word with a few vocab lessons to support their argument. The creator of the site, Alex Bazinet, even has “I pronounce GIF with a hard G” in his Twitter bio. On the other side of the divide is Steve Olsen who also has a website proclaiming “jif” the correct pronunciation, consistently citing Wilhite’s original intention.
Words evolve from their original definitions and pronunciations all the time. While we haven’t quite let “car-mel” pronouncers win over the proper “caramel” just yet, “literally” now has a second, figurative definition. And we’ve completely disrespected Andrew Carnegie’s name, who preferred “Car-nay-gie” to the popular “Carn-a-gie” (as in Hall).
We Americanize and modernize words all of the time by pure power of popularity — nothing like hearing a British person say “schedule” to remind you that language is a living thing that changes. If it didn’t, it’d be Latin.
Regardless of how you say it, just know it says something about you. If you go with soft G, congratulations, you can say it like the peanut butter with the snooty confidence of someone who’s 100% right. If you go with hard G, congratulations, you’re the future. Given the overwhelming preference and inclination of most English speakers to read it with hard G, this pronunciation will ultimately win.
