2020-10-19

[public] 2.71M views, 290K likes, 2.00K dislikes audio only

Tom Scott

Is there a "right" way to pronounce it? And why is it so complicated? •

Written with Molly Ruhl and Gretchen McCulloch. Gretchen's podcast has an episode all about this: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/180153994181/lingthusiasm-episode-26-why-do-c-and-g-come-in

Gretchen's book BECAUSE INTERNET, all about the evolution of internet language, is available:

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(Those are affiliate links that give a commission to me or Gretchen, depending on country!)

Graphics by William Marler: https://wmad.co.uk

Audio mix by Graham Haerther: https://haerther.net

REFERENCES:

Buck, S. 2014. 70% of People Worldwide Pronounce 'GIF' With a Hard 'G'. https://mashable.com/2014/10/21/mispronounced-words-tech/

O'Leary, A. (2013, May 21). An Honor for the Creator of the GIF. New York Times. Retrieved from https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/an-honor-for-the-creator-of-the-gif/

Olsen, S. The Gif Pronunciation Page. https://web.archive.org/web/20200225141100/https://www.olsenhome.com/gif/

Baio, A. 2014. ‘JIF’ Is the Format. ‘GIF’ Is the Culture. https://medium.com/message/jif-is-the-format-gif-is-the-culture-af8673796c44

McCulloch, G. 2015. Why the pronunciation of gif really can go either way. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/69147/why-pronunciation-gif-really-can-go-either-way

Dow, M. 2020. It's 'gif and gif': The english lexicon goes both ways. https://mcdowlinguist.github.io/2020/08/31/gif-pronunciation.html

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