pronunciation question - gaim

[Siviak]

How do you pronounce gif?

"gift" minus the T... gif. none of the "j" sound bullshit

[TheCotMan]

"gift" minus the T... gif. none of the "j" sound bullshit

Yeah. I saw "TIFF" in print, and pronounced it "tehff" (eh with an "i-like sound.)
When I saw "GIF" it only made sense to call it with a hard "g" and not a j-sound.

And here is another one. When we refer to something as really huge, we sometimes call it "gigantic" (j-eye gan tek) but when we use the root word "giga" to refer to bytes, it becomes "gig-ah." Why don't those people that call "GIF", "jiff" call Gigabytes "jigabytes" ?

[astcell]

Yeah. I saw "TIFF" in print, and pronounced it "tehff" (eh with an "i-like sound.)
When I saw "GIF" it only made sense to call it with a hard "g" and not a j-sound.

And here is another one. When we refer to something as really huge, we sometimes call it "gigantic" (j-eye gan tek) but when we use the root word "giga" to refer to bytes, it becomes "gig-ah." Why don't those people that call "GIF", "jiff" call Gigabytes "jigabytes" ?

I think they use jigawatts in Back to the Future.

[Ridirich]

I think Doc pronounced it wrong, but maybe that's just me.

[TheCotMan]

I think Doc pronounced it wrong, but maybe that's just me.

According to Dictionary.com it looks like jiga and 'giga are acceptable for gigawatt
But then again, they say the same thing for gigabyte

[Added:]
According to this page the inventor of GIF pronounces it JIF.
wikipedia says either

[Deviant Ollam]

"gift" minus the T... gif. none of the "j" sound bullshit

fuckin' a. it drives me up a wall when people foul that one up. /gif/ is a file type... /jif/ is a brand of peanut butter.

another bad mispronunciation like that which you don't hear often (but i have once or twice and nearly broke my neck looking around to see who said it) is when someone talks about win32 executable files. 99.999% of the population is sane and says the letters individually... "eee, ecks, eee" the other .001% ... "egg-zee"

sounds ludicrous, no? "look for the directory containing apache dot egg-zee." i've heard it.

[Gadsden]

fuckin' a. it drives me up a wall when people foul that one up. /gif/ is a file type... /jif/ is a brand of peanut butter.

another bad mispronunciation like that which you don't hear often (but i have once or twice and nearly broke my neck looking around to see who said it) is when someone talks about win32 executable files. 99.999% of the population is sane and says the letters individually... "eee, ecks, eee" the other .001% ... "egg-zee"

sounds ludicrous, no? "look for the directory containing apache dot egg-zee." i've heard it.

Let's not forget about the "et-see" directory... (/etc)...

The one that pisses me off the most is kiddies pronouncing warez as "War-Ezz" as opposed to "Wares" (with a "z" sound at the end). I tend to respond "War-Ezz? Is that where Mexican Warez come from?"

[astcell]

How about web addresses? Saying www is NINE syllables: dou-ble-you dou-ble-you dou-ble-you... I just say dubdubdub and most folks know what I mean.

et-see is not that bad, how about when some ignoramus types "ect" instead!

[Second]

An aside: A friend and client is a retired professer of linguistics. She recently showed me monograph by one of her peers that showed English speakers will generally pronounce three letter initials (e.g. FBI, NSA, CIA) as seperate letters, while four or more are usually pronounced as a word. (e.g. NASA, SANS). It was something I've not noticed before, but is seems to be true for the most part.

There's always the WNBA..but that would be hard to pronounce....win-buh

And here is another one. When we refer to something as really huge, we sometimes call it "gigantic" (j-eye gan tek) but when we use the root word "giga" to refer to bytes, it becomes "gig-ah." Why don't those people that call "GIF", "jiff" call Gigabytes "jigabytes" ?

Because you might have some opposition from this man.

[ndex]

For God's sake people, can't you just say "NO"?!?!?!

Think of the kittens!!

[Voltage Spike]

Damn you people are picky. I think I'd cause a stroke if you heard the way I used to pronounce "template" when I was younger...

How about we all agree that future acronyms are not allowed to contain vowels and just avoid this mess altogether?

fuckin' a. it drives me up a wall when people foul that one up. /gif/ is a file type... /jif/ is a brand of peanut butter.

Actually, JIF is another graphics format ... albeit not as popular.

How about web addresses? Saying www is NINE syllables: dou-ble-you dou-ble-you dou-ble-you... I just say dubdubdub and most folks know what I mean.

Deviant Ollam beat you to that complaint ... and he used the excellent phrase "syllabicaly much more efficient".

Let's not forget about the "et-see" directory... (/etc)...

Damn. I'm guilty of that one, and it isn't even an acronym...

[Ridirich]

For God's sake people, can't you just say "NO"?!?!?!

Think of the kittens!!

Just out of curiosity, are you posting in the right thread? I only ask because there has not yet been a masterbation referance till you made one.

"Every time you masterbate, God kills a kitten......Think of the kittens."

Thing is, everyone is always going to pronounce things wrong, though I do find it funny that "No Such Agency" is called "Nasa". Should it not be called "EhnSah" if you are going to pronounce it as a word?

[octalpus]

Thing is, everyone is always going to pronounce things wrong, though I do find it funny that "No Such Agency" is called "Nasa". Should it not be called "EhnSah" if you are going to pronounce it as a word?

Pronounced by whom? Everyone I know says the letters. Nasa is the space people.

[Ridirich]

Pronounced by whom? Everyone I know says the letters. Nasa is the space people.

Read the above posts. :)

An aside: A friend and client is a retired professer of linguistics. She recently showed me monograph by one of her peers that showed English speakers will generally pronounce three letter initials (e.g. FBI, NSA, CIA) as seperate letters, while four or more are usually pronounced as a word. (e.g. NASA, SANS). It was something I've not noticed before, but is seems to be true for the most part.

[ndex]

Just out of curiosity, are you posting in the right thread? I only ask because there has not yet been a masterbation referance till you made one.

"Every time you masterbate, God kills a kitten......Think of the kittens."

Thing is, everyone is always going to pronounce things wrong, though I do find it funny that "No Such Agency" is called "Nasa". Should it not be called "EhnSah" if you are going to pronounce it as a word?

Uhm, it was *you* that made a reference to masturbation, you disgusting perv. I made a reference to kittens, as in "every time you page a sysadmin, God kills a kitten".

I took a poll, their are two acceptable pronunciations: "game" (rhymes with "lame") and GAY-im, not to be confused with anything cool and/or HighWiz related.

NSA is pronounced EN ESS AYY (like the Fonz) and we are the space people, NASA just manages infrastructure, logistics, delivery systems and emergency management.