Or: ‘I upgraded the drive-train!’ Would be cheaper to buy a new bike with the upgrade on it usually.
Well I’m not getting dragged into the gif pronunciation debate…
It’s definitely pronounced gif, not gif, and I can’t be any clearer than that. It would be like pronouncing Zwift as Zwift and wouldn’t that be silly?
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I remember reading a while ago that the guy who invented them said it like “jif.” He was wrong then and remains wrong today.
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But did he say it’s only jif if you can say it for 60min?
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The joke when I was in my college drafting program:
- Choosy graphics artists choose GIF (Jif).
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Because it stands for Graphics Interchange Format, since its inception it’s been pronounced with a soft G, like git or get. I was around back then… no one said Jif. That’s crept into use over time, and in the end… who cares? I say GIF, but I don’t go around correcting people who say it differently.
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I’m with you on the common pronunciation. I just can’t believe the creator of the file format pronounces it wrong.
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I was around too. The inventor of the gif said it was pronounced with a soft g. It was a pun on “jiffy”, because it was quicker than other competing formats.
As far as the idea that it’s a hard g because it stand for graphics, that’s not how acronyms work. If it were, NASA would be pronounced “nay-say”. SCUBA would be pronounced “scuhbaa”.
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As a former RhetComp teacher and firm believer in language as a living, evolving thing, I’ve come to terms with many linguistic abominations over the years. With god as my witness, I no longer snark or even twitch when someone says “irregardless.”
Hard “g” GIF is a hill I will die on.
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While on this… Why not also discuss the word SQL… Or as some software developers would call it… Sequel…
My dying mountain is the SQL pronunciation… I will say the 3 individual words till I die
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Ha! Yes, that’s quite the cringe worthy word. I believe it is in dictionaries now, but still very 
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Since I’ve caused this thread to go completely off the rails (sorry Other Chad), I’d say it’s NASA like nassa because that’s how it’s phonetically spelled. Or because the N stands for National, which is the same sound. You don’t take each letter individually. Just like SCUBA is skooba because the C is a hard C. That’s the whole point of an acronym. You say the word. And most, if not all, acronyms are said phonetically. Why would you take each letter as an individual? Might as well be an initialism if you want to do that. Or if you like giving Christmas jifts.
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It’s jif, duh 
. Now that that’s solved, pineapple is excellent on pizza.
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I say GIF
And pineapple does not belong on pizza
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Pineapple on pizza 
I can no longer lurk around. I have to intervene!
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Next thing you know these same people want fruit in their beer!
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My favourite pronunciation of SQL I’ve come across is ‘squeal’.
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Hey, at least you didn’t bring up the metric vs imperial debate
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