I've pronounced it like JIF since the mid-90's when I first learned of GIFs. I've had to send many people here to prove I wasn't crazy: http://www.olsenhome.com/gif/
It really surprises you that names based on cute misspellings that are effectively unpronouncable when taken at face value get pronounced differently by different people?
If Syosev wanted people to pronounce it "engine x", he should have called it "engine x".
I'm an American and I catch hell from other Americans when I say "lie-nux." Considering we pronounce Linus as "lie-nus" I really don't see the issue. The recordings of Linus pronouncing it in two non-English languages have a subtle "ee" in there and I don't expect my peers to say "leenux" - they'll drop to the short "ih" sound.
> Xing is allegedly pronounced "crossing", but I say "ksing".
Got any info on this? I've heard this only several times (i.e. rarely). Always from people who are used to the "crossing" signs, but never from anybody else.
There are a lot of examples in linguistics where the "correct" pronunciation of a word is not the common pronunciation, and so the common pronunciation becomes the correct one.
I've heard maybe one in every twenty people pronunce it as "jif", and when they do so it's not because it seems like it's the natural pronunciation, it's because they once read it was the correct was to pronounce it and want to hammer that fact home.
I mean, I can only speak from personal experience, but I always call gif, jif, and it has nothing to do with whether its correct pronunciation or not. I just read it like that and could care less about the facts
Most linguists would agree that it is logically contradictory to state that the majority of speakers pronounce a word incorrectly, because the correct pronunciation is determined by observing how people actually say a word, and not how one very special person thinks other people should pronounce it.
It is a very old divide, and the descriptivists won a very long time ago. I'm sure there are prescriptivist linguists around somewhere but I haven't met them.
This question always reminded me of the discussion we used to have in the early Quake scene; hard G or J for the word gib. Hard G always made more sense to me, but then I heard someone from id software explain that it should be a J, since the root of the word was "giblets".
Even knowing I'm not saying it the same was as the person who coined the phrase couldn't make me change. hard G gib just sounded more correct!
I'm only 23 years old, and I hail from the East Coast of Canada. I've never heard anyone pronounce it "Jif", but I had read on reddit that some people have had the opposite experience, never hearing the "Giff" pronunciation.
