Is this *actual* news - as in currently happening in2012?
Who uses Gifs nowadays and what happened to bring them to the attention of the OED?
Not content with somehow managing to proclaim ‘GIF’ the USA’s word of the year for 2012, the lexicographers at Oxford Dictionaries now insist that the correct pronunciation of the word does not use a hard g, as in golf. The dictionary chose GIF as its word of the year because the USA has gone GIF-crazy. Making satirical GIFs …
"Jif to us is either a lemon juice in a squeezy bottle or a kitchen cleaner (although that now goes by the name of Cif)..."
Ah yeah Cif. Sounds like one particular STD (STI for the younger generation I believe) - A disease - that's what GIFs will be to the web if their poxy 256 colours make a comeback, except for misplaced nostalgia of course.
I'll pronounce it "jif" when people start talking about jifics artists and paper with squares on it is pronounced "jiff" paper.
"The GIF (Graphics Interchange Format), pronounced "JIF", was designed by CompuServe and the official specification released in June of 1987."
By using an acronym the creators gave up the right to dictate pronunciation.
A bit of IBM trivia here: In Canada CICS is pronounced "kicks" whereas the rest of the world pronounces it C.I.C.S.
CICS was definitely pronounced 'kicks' when I went for a job at Hursley in the 90's. Although, as I sat waiting for my interview, I witnessed a large high-level meeting where they were trying to decide whether to put 'cubes' or 'rings' in the urinals... so I'm quite glad I didn't get the job ;-). Nice house tho.
Oh, and for the record I have only ever heard/used the hard G GIF pronunciation.
Hmm, time for a google map to work out the patterns methinks :-)