Hi, wonderful readers. I hope you are enjoying the last vestiges of summer. I am, although I’ve had to get used to high humidity days once more.
I thought of doing something different. For those of you who don’t know, I love languages. I always love where a word originated, how every language borrows from another, and the nuances of language. Here is something I came across when listening to the gentleman who is narrating my up-and-coming audio novel for Hanging Softly in the Night.
So… do you like smooth or chunky?
I bet I’m losing all of you (or many). The Americans may get the reference from a commercial a while back.
The issue is simple, though: How do you pronounce GIF? You know, the cute mini-videos that you attach to comments or memes?
There are actually two schools of thought. The first one, which is what I followed naturally, was to pronounce it following grammar rules. The “G” is soft and you pronounce it as you would the word “jiffy.” The second school of thought is that it is an acronym for Graphics Interchange Format. So, it would be pronounced with a hard “G” as in the word “gift.”
Potato, potato, as they say.
Well, if you have been pronouncing it with a hard “G,” you would be wrong. The creator of this format, Steven Wilhite, says that is not the way to pronounce it. He always did it with a soft “G”, thinking of the peanut butter brand, Jif. Therefore, my reference to smooth or chunky.
According to Wilhite, there is no “either” or “either” pronunciation.
So there.
