Recently, I became aware of the technocracy’s Civil War regarding the pronunciation of the noun phrase used to describe (generally) short in duration animations common on the blogs. Of course, I mean, the GIF. But is it said as one would describe a present in certain local dialects of English (gift minus t), or does it share its character with that of a popular crushed peanut spread (Jiff)?
As one who has been known for his anal retention, sometimes advancing it so far as to be (un)favorably compared to the Big Lebowski‘s Walter Sobczak, one would think I would approach how to say the phrasal for “short in length internet based animation” in the more aggressively advocated JIF style. Alas, I am not.
In as much as my experience at the time of the original Sobczakian comparisons pivoted me toward being a stickler, at that time, I also met a group almost as intractable, &, oddly, more unlikeable, than even I: the Oregonians. Natives of the Beaver State are rather committed to the ONLY PROPER vocalization of their state’s name: Oreghin to rhyme with “foreskin”. & any time I found myself in their company — which was often, at age 18, 19, as Oregon was the third most represented state at my collegiate alma mater (Ripon College boasted students mostly from Wisconsin & Illinois, obviously, but next up on the list of common geographic origins was that Left Coast bastion of raptorization; possibly because the college president, of the time, was a Reed College alumnus (if memory serves)) — & I spoke their homeland’s name incorrectly, they would lambaste me & educate, sometimes comically (“it requires a big or’gan to live in the Beaver State”), sometimes pedantically (“the word ends in ‘g-o-n’; of course it’s ‘ghin'”), once more over, how to say the name the only right & natural way. (Never mind that to say “organ” as ‘or-uh-gan’ would, itself, be incorrect, nor that no Oregonian I ever met described the seat of America’s National Defense organization as ‘The Pentaghin‘.) So, I learned, at least in moments, to abjure the rigid enforcement of (perceived) absolutes.
& so, we come, a decade & an half later, to GIF. Is it soft g, or hard? I think another linguistic experience of my late teens points to the answer. Or, at least, to the variability of pronunciation, depending on one’s region of origin & nature of language instruction: friend of mine, at the time — let’s call him “the Ultimate H.” (a shortening of his fake WWF (this was pre-World Wildlife Federation lawsuit) stagename) — was insistent that the computing term ‘gigabyte’ should be said with the soft g, a la such words as the name ‘George’, science object ‘gyroscope’, & alcoholic potable ‘gin’; thus, jigga-byte, as if Jay-Z had branched out from music to software. H. was unwavering in this belief. Then, at once, a friend of this friend — & also, for a brief time, summer ’99, my employer; let’s call him ‘Aphex SS’ (which may or may not have been his vanity license plate, as seen, by me, on a mid-size sedan in our shared adolescent neighborhood upon my return to same in late ’03) — grew exasperated by the clearly misinformed & repetitious opining of H., & said, “In certain cases, [H], you might be right how to say a g followed by an e or i, but it’s not set in stone. Ergo, giggle”.
& the mic dropped.
I am sure, too, ‘Phex very well might have been jiggling — I mean, giggling — a little.
& I suppose, then, the lesson is — it may, in fact, be that a short-duration computer-animation is a JIF, but that might also be an artifact of a speaker’s origin as much as — in fact, quite more than — actual application of rules of elocution.
(For the record, I say GIF. Because JIFulmination just sounds weird, like something you might find in a more esoteric adult entertainment.)
National Gallery of Clipart 