The P in JPEG stands for photographic so I guess we shall pronounce it “jayfeg” based on that logic.
/s
Descriptive linguistic opinion: both the hard and soft G pronunciations are used, with the hard G being more common, but I like the soft G and use it myself.
The only argument is that the guy who invented and named the GIF originally pronounced it that way, but he was a computer scientist, not a linguist. Thankfully the inevitable and uncontrollable evolution of language corrected that mistake fairly quickly.
Because at the origin of the format, “choosy graphic designers choose .GIF”. Which is a direct reference to JIF, the brand of peanut butter, and their tagline.
The pronunciation of an acronym often has little to nothing to do with the words themselves they represent, and more to do with the acronym itself as though it were a word.
If you pronounce gif based on the word itself, it would clearly have a hard “G”. I don’t think it’s decided by the creator anymore then by the words making up the acronym either.
Imo, word pronunciation and meaning depends on whatever “takes” in society. Most just say it like it would sound, the creators pronunciation clearly lost.
I mean, they got to name it… How it sounds is part of that
How it sounds is a lot more related to basic prononciation rules then the arbitrary whims of the inventor.
In this case, he chose to name it GIF which is, believe it or not, pronounced gif in the English language. If he wanted to have it sound like jif, he should have named it JIF.
Not to say that we don’t sometimes disregard the rules for certain words. Ultimately a words meaning and prononciation is collectively decided through usage. I think collectively, we have chosen to ignore the creators lack of basic linguistic skills and prononce the word how it’s written.
That’s just incorrect. Multiple studies have shown that how you think a word is pronounced is based on other words you know, not what the actual pronunciation is. When I first saw the word gif, I pronounced it with a soft g. Turns out that’s the correct pronunciation (because it’s a product name, not a random word) but if I had happen to have heard a hard g word more recently then I probably would have thought it was pronounced the wrong way.
The closest word to gif is gift for me. I think that’s the conclusion most come to and why the hard G is the most common.
A pronunciation that is common and widespread becomes the correct way to say something. Languages are constantly evolving and in movement. They don’t care for what a few or even the words creator want.
I’m pointing to the lead of the team that created it. They get to name it, not me.
I’m also not oddly mad about it like the person replying to me with lots of exclamation points, the user in OPs image, or the person using their alt that has only been used to downvote people they are in conversations with for the past few months.
All I said was the people responsible for it say its a soft g, not a hard g.
But if the creator of jpeg came out tomorrow and said "it’s actually supposed to be pronounced “jayfeg”, would anyone change how they say it? I highly doubt it.
Because the words inside an acronym have no bearing on how the acronym is pronounced. And in this case, it’s not just as acronym. It’s a product name, where the creators get to choose to name it whatever the fuck they want. “Choosy developers choose gif”. So there’s plenty of reasons it should be using a soft g and zero reasons it should be using a hard g.
But if you are talking about the correct way to pronounce something shouldn’t that be the way the creator named it?
It’s like if you named your dog Aaron and they went by the name for a while and all of a sudden people start calling him Ay Ay Ron because they saw the two As and assumed that was how to pronounce it.
What pronunciation would you consider correct the one the creator came up with or the one an uninformed consensus came up with?
Ever heard of dialects? Accents? Creoles? There are no correct or incorrect pronunciations, just functional and non-functional ones. Gif currently has two functional pronunciations. That doesn’t make one more correct than the other just because the guy who said it first said it that way. If you are able to accurately relay the information you’re trying to relay, you are “correct”. If the dog responds to ay-ay-ron, that is functionally its name.
It’s not the guy who said it first it’s the guy who made a file format and chose a name that was the same as the peanut butter company…
Are you seriously this narcissistic that you can’t admit the way you say something is technically wrong? A product was made with a specific name and you choose to say it contrary to that way because it conveys the information it’s a perfectly acceptable way of pronouncing it but if you can’t admit that you are technically wrong in something so stupid and benign as a pronunciation of an acronym then you might have a problem.
I’ll even go first and announce to all the people on this thread that I am in facts not gods gift to the world and sometimes pronounce words differently than their correct pronunciations because the correct ones are less fun.
Hey I’m the one who said it’s the only argument that holds any water, I just already have water. I lost this argument to my brother over a decade ago and have admitted I was wrong since then. Language is only valuable insofar as you’re able to make your point understood to the people you’re talking to. There is no correct way to say anything except the way that your audience understands. I’ll give you that the 1987 CompuServ file was pronounced with a soft g (seemingly due to lazy marketing), but the word has gone beyond that product. As others have mentioned, most “gifs” are not even in that format anymore and haven’t been for years and years. The majority of people using the word don’t really know what it means and certainly don’t know or care how it was coined. But if it makes you feel better, I promise the next time I’m buying a .gif in 1987, I’ll use the soft g.
but if you can’t admit that you are technically wrong in something so stupid and benign as a pronunciation of an acronym then you might have a problem.
If you’re getting this upset about something you admit is stupid and benign then you might have a problem.
“island” was originally spelled “eiland” until some scholars started adding an ‘s’ to it in order to make it look more Latin (despite not having a Latin root).
Which spelling would you consider correct? The original or the one people use?
You are comparing the evolution of language from hundreds of years to a group of people mispronouncing a word since it’s usually seen written from only a a few decades ago
The format came out in 1987 and the creator has on multiple occasions said that the correct way to pronounce it is with a soft g
If in 2187 if the whole world starts saying it with a hard g you can pretend that’s correct and comparable to an evolution of the human language but considering the founder is still alive and calling it gif and your argument boils down to “the person who created it is saying it wrong” then it’s not comparable to the change in spelling of island…
You are comparing the evolution of language from hundreds of years
Nope. I am talking about how one person on one day did a specific thing and it caught on. Was “island” not acceptable when written that way and only acceptable exactly 100 years after they did that?
If in 2187 if the whole world starts saying it with a hard g you can pretend that’s correct and comparable to an evolution of the human language
Okay, so exactly how long does a word have to be used a specific way before people shut the fuck up about it?
This is another case of “my exact usage of language is correct. Anything from before I was born is incorrect, and no further changes can be tolerated until I am dead.”
The day a person wrote island they were wrong. If they tried to insist to everyone else that they were right and the dictionaries are wrong they would be called an idiot. If they tried to insist to everyone that they came up with an alternate spelling to align with the Latin roots that’s a different story.
Now considering this is an arbitrary name that someone made up to specifically call it gif like the peanut butter brand… I would say they get at least a few decades of them being correct
You can say it with a hard g as much as you want but to claim you are correct is another story
If they tried to insist to everyone that they came up with an alternate spelling to align with the Latin roots that’s a different story.
But the English word for Island does not have any Latin roots, so it’s even dumber.
I agree that the person who first put an ‘s’ in ‘Island’ was an idiot. I think it’s idiotic that that is now the correct spelling. But at some point the ‘s’ in ‘island’ went from stupid to correct and it would be even dumber for me to try to fight against it.
My point is that it wasn’t a factor of time that made ‘island’ the correct spelling, it was simply a factor of common usage. Language is defined by how it is used and understood. If people pronouce it gif and are understood then that is the correct pronunciation. Arguing against that is a waste of time, and it’s also admitting that the pronouciation you prefer is not the one commonly used and understood.
As the initialism it is. It’s impossible to mispronounce, or have multiple competing pronunciations for initialisms as the names of letters are contextually static. Yes C can make different sounds in words, but if you’re just saying the name of the letter, there’s only one way to say it.
It always surprises me when people can spend this much time writing something up and miss the greater point even if the specifics can be challenged. The greater point, of course is the ‘c’ changes based upon phonomes.
Your point is valid, but ‘c’ is also has competing pronunciations in an acronym. Here’s an example.
CERT - Computer Emergency Response Team
The larger gif pronunciation has nothing to do with with the fact that the g stands for graphic. It is irrelevant to the larger topic and is a tangent.
The only argument is that the guy who invented and named the GIF originally pronounced it that way, but he was a computer scientist, not a linguist. Thankfully the inevitable and uncontrollable evolution of language corrected that mistake fairly quickly.
It’s an acronym. There’s no linguistic requirement for any of the letters to match any part of the pronunciation. NASA, scuba, I can list a hundred acronyms that have absolutely no connection to their expanded pronunciation.
And no, it wasn’t just the dude who invented it. It was the entire company, CompuServe, because they were trying to sell a product. “Choosy developers choose gif”. It’s literally got a tagline that tells you how it’s pronounced.
There’s no linguistic requirement for any of the letters to match any part of the pronunciation.
I made no statements to the contrary, not sure why you directed any of that first paragraph at me and not the person I responded to. Regardless, the only “correct” pronunciations of any words are the ones that find purchase in the cultural lexicon. The fact that the soft g pronunciation was chosen by a corporation trying to cash in on the success of a different corporation is even less convincing of an argument. Fuck those soulless money-grubbers, they can take their advertising slogan-based neoligisms and shove them in their arse, but pronounced like “ass” because language evolves. You have to evolve with it or you won’t understand it.
You’re absolutely correct, regardless of who defined the sound, it’s how it’s generally pronounced in public that becomes the status quo and therefore “correct” way.
I’ve never heard anyone in real life use the soft G. Doesn’t mean people don’t, but regionally it’s “JIF” for me.
The funny thing is, regardless of how it’s said people who know anything about computers understand what you’re talking about, so the argument is really a useless one. Maybe if .jif was used more then it would matter, but I can’t say I’ve seen a .jif file in the wild myself.
I mean, the pronunciation of proper nouns doesn’t follow other rules of language. If the creator is still alive and is telling you the correct pronunciation then that’s the pronunciation. It’s a product, a proper noun, not a simple word.
It’s not a proper noun any more than granola is. Even if that point stood, when you get down to it, there simply are no “rules of language,” there is just making noises that other people understand or making ones that they don’t. You think proper nouns can’t have multiple pronunciations, well what do you call those little yellow, orange, and brown peanut butter candies? How do you say the capital of South Dakota? Speaking of SD, did you know there’s a town there called Sinai, pronounced “sigh-knee-eye” by its residents? I legitimately know a guy named Jurgen, one of his parents pronounces it with the J sound and the other pronounces it with the Y sound! It may be infuriating at times but that’s just how spoken language works. I urge you to embrace it as fighting it is fruitless. It’s also easier to get used to cringey new slang when you realize it’s a universal constant.
It is how the word was originally said and intended to be used. Evidence: the literal first advertisement for the format: “choosy developers choose GIF”, a pun on the advertisement for JIF peanut butter.
the pronunciation of g before a vowel is not always hard. Giraffe. Gin.
the pronunciation of the individual words in an acronym don’t define its pronunciation. NASA - Aeronautic, Association - do you pronounce it NÆSÂ? ASAP - do you say ÂSÂP or AySAP?
It’s fine to say it however you want, but to act like one way is definitively correct, for the reasons you cite anyway, is bad
I didn’t cite any reasons and I didn’t say that there is a correct and incorrect way to pronounce it now, just that the way they chose to pronounce it originally was arbitrary and unintuitive. Add a “t” to the end, what does that spell? The pronunciations of giraffe and gin are equally unintuitive to modern American English speakers, they’re just old words that have been well-established in the lexicon so no one thinks about that. If someone came up with the word gin today, we’d probably be having the same argument about it.
And when I said it’s the only argument, I meant it’s the only one that holds any water. It’s still leaking all over the place.
They’re not unintuitive. Just because you think that doesn’t make it true. Tom Scott has a whole video on the topic, essentially however you first associate that word is how you think it should be pronounced. That doesn’t make it unintuitive, as would be evidenced by the pretty much 50/50 split of usage for soft g vs hard g for years. I had huge arguments about this back in like 2016/7 and it literally was a 50/50 split. Might have changed since then, but that doesn’t mean jack shit about intuitiveness.
Both pronunciations already had solid handholds in the zeitgeist by 2016, it was named 30 years before that. I’d argue the 50/50 split you provide nothing but hearsay for is proof that the hard g pronunciation is more intuitive as it was originally marketed and advertised with the soft g (and a pronunciation guide for the slogan as folks have helpfully pointed out). By your and Tom Scott’s reasoning, everyone exposed to it then would use the soft g, but people in the decades after who knew nothing of the cheap marketing stunt would inevitably pronounce it however made the most sense to them. Thus the hard g pronunciation.
Now for my own personal hearsay, it’s never been anywhere close to 50/50 and it’s gotten more and more unbalanced towards the hard g over time. In 2011 it was maybe 70/30 hard g/soft g, now it feels like 95/5 🤷♂️. But again, that’s all obviously irrelevant due to it’s subjectivity.
By your and Tom Scott’s reasoning, everyone exposed to it then would use the soft g,
No by Tom Scott’s explanation (not reasoning, he was stating actual science and scientific studies) exactly what has happened would have happened. People hear the word with a hard g and they forever associate it that way, even if it isn’t correct. It has nothing to do with how people think it should be pronounced or even the way that makes most sense to them. It’s about former associations with other words grabbing your mind at that moment and clicking. Doesn’t matter if you look back at it later and think (oh soft g makes sense cause it’s the peanut butter). You’ll already have the hard g stuck.
The “G” stands for “Graphics”. Why would anybody pronounce it “jif”?
The P in JPEG stands for photographic so I guess we shall pronounce it “jayfeg” based on that logic.
/s
Descriptive linguistic opinion: both the hard and soft G pronunciations are used, with the hard G being more common, but I like the soft G and use it myself.
id vibe with jayfeg if it meant everyone pronounces gif correctly
Steve Wilhite (engineering lead on the team that created GIF) said the soft g is the right pronunciation.
original comment
Because at the origin of the format, “choosy graphic designers choose .GIF”. Which is a direct reference to JIF, the brand of peanut butter, and their tagline.
The pronunciation of an acronym often has little to nothing to do with the words themselves they represent, and more to do with the acronym itself as though it were a word.
So they decided how it should be pronounced based on a cheap marketing ploy, even less reason to care how the creators said it.
but there’s already .jif!!!
Reverse that.
.jif (jpeg interchange format) came out 5 years after .gif.
It was an homage to GIF.
Edited to add: Also no one ever really used it.
If you pronounce gif based on the word itself, it would clearly have a hard “G”. I don’t think it’s decided by the creator anymore then by the words making up the acronym either.
Imo, word pronunciation and meaning depends on whatever “takes” in society. Most just say it like it would sound, the creators pronunciation clearly lost.
I mean, they got to name it… How it sounds is part of that…
How long have people been talking about how to pronounce gif?
I don’t think there are any winners or losers here.
I agree there are no winners, there have been plenty of losers.
How it sounds is a lot more related to basic prononciation rules then the arbitrary whims of the inventor.
In this case, he chose to name it GIF which is, believe it or not, pronounced gif in the English language. If he wanted to have it sound like jif, he should have named it JIF.
Not to say that we don’t sometimes disregard the rules for certain words. Ultimately a words meaning and prononciation is collectively decided through usage. I think collectively, we have chosen to ignore the creators lack of basic linguistic skills and prononce the word how it’s written.
That’s just incorrect. Multiple studies have shown that how you think a word is pronounced is based on other words you know, not what the actual pronunciation is. When I first saw the word gif, I pronounced it with a soft g. Turns out that’s the correct pronunciation (because it’s a product name, not a random word) but if I had happen to have heard a hard g word more recently then I probably would have thought it was pronounced the wrong way.
The closest word to gif is gift for me. I think that’s the conclusion most come to and why the hard G is the most common.
A pronunciation that is common and widespread becomes the correct way to say something. Languages are constantly evolving and in movement. They don’t care for what a few or even the words creator want.
You know I daresay that basically your exact comment is what OOP was responding too on reddit.
Wouldn’t doubt it.
Some folks get unreasonably mad about what they consider “right”.
That’s, exactly what it sounded like you were doing…
I’m pointing to the lead of the team that created it. They get to name it, not me.
I’m also not oddly mad about it like the person replying to me with lots of exclamation points, the user in OPs image, or the person using their alt that has only been used to downvote people they are in conversations with for the past few months.
All I said was the people responsible for it say its a soft g, not a hard g.
Wow. You did a lot of research into who has been downvoting you for someone who isn’t mad about this…
We already pronounce it correctly.
But if the creator of jpeg came out tomorrow and said "it’s actually supposed to be pronounced “jayfeg”, would anyone change how they say it? I highly doubt it.
And if it would be spelled “jpheg”, that’s how we would pronounce it.
Jyp heg would be my pronunciation for that.
Well some of us are refined enough to pronounce it like “giraffe-ics.”
(But also because it was a joke by the format’s creators. “Choosy developers choose GIF.” Like the “choosy moms” Jif peanut butter commercials.)
Because the words inside an acronym have no bearing on how the acronym is pronounced. And in this case, it’s not just as acronym. It’s a product name, where the creators get to choose to name it whatever the fuck they want. “Choosy developers choose gif”. So there’s plenty of reasons it should be using a soft g and zero reasons it should be using a hard g.
deleted by creator
You just gave a reason for a hard G.
No I didn’t, you’ve misread.
Ask the person who created the format, who pronounced it that way themselves
Ask the company who developed it and used a selling slogan that parodied JIF peanut butter.
The U in scuba stands for underwater yet people pronounce it scOOba
The E in hepa stands for efficiency yet its pronounced HEPA with a short E
The A in nato stands for Atlantic and the O stands for organization
The first A in ASAP is for as
The Os in POTUS, SCOTUS and FLOTUS all come from of and the Us comes from United
Acronyms don’t need to sound like the word they are from
And words don’t need to sound the way they did when they were coined
But if you are talking about the correct way to pronounce something shouldn’t that be the way the creator named it?
It’s like if you named your dog Aaron and they went by the name for a while and all of a sudden people start calling him Ay Ay Ron because they saw the two As and assumed that was how to pronounce it.
What pronunciation would you consider correct the one the creator came up with or the one an uninformed consensus came up with?
Ever heard of dialects? Accents? Creoles? There are no correct or incorrect pronunciations, just functional and non-functional ones. Gif currently has two functional pronunciations. That doesn’t make one more correct than the other just because the guy who said it first said it that way. If you are able to accurately relay the information you’re trying to relay, you are “correct”. If the dog responds to ay-ay-ron, that is functionally its name.
It’s not the guy who said it first it’s the guy who made a file format and chose a name that was the same as the peanut butter company…
Are you seriously this narcissistic that you can’t admit the way you say something is technically wrong? A product was made with a specific name and you choose to say it contrary to that way because it conveys the information it’s a perfectly acceptable way of pronouncing it but if you can’t admit that you are technically wrong in something so stupid and benign as a pronunciation of an acronym then you might have a problem.
I’ll even go first and announce to all the people on this thread that I am in facts not gods gift to the world and sometimes pronounce words differently than their correct pronunciations because the correct ones are less fun.
Hey I’m the one who said it’s the only argument that holds any water, I just already have water. I lost this argument to my brother over a decade ago and have admitted I was wrong since then. Language is only valuable insofar as you’re able to make your point understood to the people you’re talking to. There is no correct way to say anything except the way that your audience understands. I’ll give you that the 1987 CompuServ file was pronounced with a soft g (seemingly due to lazy marketing), but the word has gone beyond that product. As others have mentioned, most “gifs” are not even in that format anymore and haven’t been for years and years. The majority of people using the word don’t really know what it means and certainly don’t know or care how it was coined. But if it makes you feel better, I promise the next time I’m buying a .gif in 1987, I’ll use the soft g.
If you’re getting this upset about something you admit is stupid and benign then you might have a problem.
“island” was originally spelled “eiland” until some scholars started adding an ‘s’ to it in order to make it look more Latin (despite not having a Latin root).
Which spelling would you consider correct? The original or the one people use?
You are comparing the evolution of language from hundreds of years to a group of people mispronouncing a word since it’s usually seen written from only a a few decades ago
The format came out in 1987 and the creator has on multiple occasions said that the correct way to pronounce it is with a soft g
If in 2187 if the whole world starts saying it with a hard g you can pretend that’s correct and comparable to an evolution of the human language but considering the founder is still alive and calling it gif and your argument boils down to “the person who created it is saying it wrong” then it’s not comparable to the change in spelling of island…
Nope. I am talking about how one person on one day did a specific thing and it caught on. Was “island” not acceptable when written that way and only acceptable exactly 100 years after they did that?
Okay, so exactly how long does a word have to be used a specific way before people shut the fuck up about it?
This is another case of “my exact usage of language is correct. Anything from before I was born is incorrect, and no further changes can be tolerated until I am dead.”
The day a person wrote island they were wrong. If they tried to insist to everyone else that they were right and the dictionaries are wrong they would be called an idiot. If they tried to insist to everyone that they came up with an alternate spelling to align with the Latin roots that’s a different story.
Now considering this is an arbitrary name that someone made up to specifically call it gif like the peanut butter brand… I would say they get at least a few decades of them being correct
You can say it with a hard g as much as you want but to claim you are correct is another story
But the English word for Island does not have any Latin roots, so it’s even dumber.
I agree that the person who first put an ‘s’ in ‘Island’ was an idiot. I think it’s idiotic that that is now the correct spelling. But at some point the ‘s’ in ‘island’ went from stupid to correct and it would be even dumber for me to try to fight against it.
My point is that it wasn’t a factor of time that made ‘island’ the correct spelling, it was simply a factor of common usage. Language is defined by how it is used and understood. If people pronouce it gif and are understood then that is the correct pronunciation. Arguing against that is a waste of time, and it’s also admitting that the pronouciation you prefer is not the one commonly used and understood.
How do you pronounce CD?
Sidik. There are more than one languages.
Cee-Deez nutz
🐿️
deleted by creator
KD - Kompact Disc
Brought to you by KDE
As the initialism it is. It’s impossible to mispronounce, or have multiple competing pronunciations for initialisms as the names of letters are contextually static. Yes C can make different sounds in words, but if you’re just saying the name of the letter, there’s only one way to say it.
It always surprises me when people can spend this much time writing something up and miss the greater point even if the specifics can be challenged. The greater point, of course is the ‘c’ changes based upon phonomes.
Your point is valid, but ‘c’ is also has competing pronunciations in an acronym. Here’s an example.
CERT - Computer Emergency Response TeamThe larger
gifpronunciation has nothing to do with with the fact that thegstands forgraphic. It is irrelevant to the larger topic and is a tangent.The only argument is that the guy who invented and named the GIF originally pronounced it that way, but he was a computer scientist, not a linguist. Thankfully the inevitable and uncontrollable evolution of language corrected that mistake fairly quickly.
It’s an acronym. There’s no linguistic requirement for any of the letters to match any part of the pronunciation. NASA, scuba, I can list a hundred acronyms that have absolutely no connection to their expanded pronunciation.
And no, it wasn’t just the dude who invented it. It was the entire company, CompuServe, because they were trying to sell a product. “Choosy developers choose gif”. It’s literally got a tagline that tells you how it’s pronounced.
I made no statements to the contrary, not sure why you directed any of that first paragraph at me and not the person I responded to. Regardless, the only “correct” pronunciations of any words are the ones that find purchase in the cultural lexicon. The fact that the soft g pronunciation was chosen by a corporation trying to cash in on the success of a different corporation is even less convincing of an argument. Fuck those soulless money-grubbers, they can take their advertising slogan-based neoligisms and shove them in their arse, but pronounced like “ass” because language evolves. You have to evolve with it or you won’t understand it.
You’re absolutely correct, regardless of who defined the sound, it’s how it’s generally pronounced in public that becomes the status quo and therefore “correct” way.
I’ve never heard anyone in real life use the soft G. Doesn’t mean people don’t, but regionally it’s “JIF” for me.
The funny thing is, regardless of how it’s said people who know anything about computers understand what you’re talking about, so the argument is really a useless one. Maybe if .jif was used more then it would matter, but I can’t say I’ve seen a .jif file in the wild myself.
Right? If the creator of jpeg came and said “It’s actually pronounced ‘Jay-pej’,” people would just laugh at them.
I mean, the pronunciation of proper nouns doesn’t follow other rules of language. If the creator is still alive and is telling you the correct pronunciation then that’s the pronunciation. It’s a product, a proper noun, not a simple word.
It’s not a proper noun any more than granola is. Even if that point stood, when you get down to it, there simply are no “rules of language,” there is just making noises that other people understand or making ones that they don’t. You think proper nouns can’t have multiple pronunciations, well what do you call those little yellow, orange, and brown peanut butter candies? How do you say the capital of South Dakota? Speaking of SD, did you know there’s a town there called Sinai, pronounced “sigh-knee-eye” by its residents? I legitimately know a guy named Jurgen, one of his parents pronounces it with the J sound and the other pronounces it with the Y sound! It may be infuriating at times but that’s just how spoken language works. I urge you to embrace it as fighting it is fruitless. It’s also easier to get used to cringey new slang when you realize it’s a universal constant.
Nope that is far from the only argument.
It is how the word was originally said and intended to be used. Evidence: the literal first advertisement for the format: “choosy developers choose GIF”, a pun on the advertisement for JIF peanut butter.
the pronunciation of g before a vowel is not always hard. Giraffe. Gin.
the pronunciation of the individual words in an acronym don’t define its pronunciation. NASA - Aeronautic, Association - do you pronounce it NÆSÂ? ASAP - do you say ÂSÂP or AySAP?
It’s fine to say it however you want, but to act like one way is definitively correct, for the reasons you cite anyway, is bad
I didn’t cite any reasons and I didn’t say that there is a correct and incorrect way to pronounce it now, just that the way they chose to pronounce it originally was arbitrary and unintuitive. Add a “t” to the end, what does that spell? The pronunciations of giraffe and gin are equally unintuitive to modern American English speakers, they’re just old words that have been well-established in the lexicon so no one thinks about that. If someone came up with the word gin today, we’d probably be having the same argument about it.
And when I said it’s the only argument, I meant it’s the only one that holds any water. It’s still leaking all over the place.
They’re not unintuitive. Just because you think that doesn’t make it true. Tom Scott has a whole video on the topic, essentially however you first associate that word is how you think it should be pronounced. That doesn’t make it unintuitive, as would be evidenced by the pretty much 50/50 split of usage for soft g vs hard g for years. I had huge arguments about this back in like 2016/7 and it literally was a 50/50 split. Might have changed since then, but that doesn’t mean jack shit about intuitiveness.
Both pronunciations already had solid handholds in the zeitgeist by 2016, it was named 30 years before that. I’d argue the 50/50 split you provide nothing but hearsay for is proof that the hard g pronunciation is more intuitive as it was originally marketed and advertised with the soft g (and a pronunciation guide for the slogan as folks have helpfully pointed out). By your and Tom Scott’s reasoning, everyone exposed to it then would use the soft g, but people in the decades after who knew nothing of the cheap marketing stunt would inevitably pronounce it however made the most sense to them. Thus the hard g pronunciation.
Now for my own personal hearsay, it’s never been anywhere close to 50/50 and it’s gotten more and more unbalanced towards the hard g over time. In 2011 it was maybe 70/30 hard g/soft g, now it feels like 95/5 🤷♂️. But again, that’s all obviously irrelevant due to it’s subjectivity.
No by Tom Scott’s explanation (not reasoning, he was stating actual science and scientific studies) exactly what has happened would have happened. People hear the word with a hard g and they forever associate it that way, even if it isn’t correct. It has nothing to do with how people think it should be pronounced or even the way that makes most sense to them. It’s about former associations with other words grabbing your mind at that moment and clicking. Doesn’t matter if you look back at it later and think (oh soft g makes sense cause it’s the peanut butter). You’ll already have the hard g stuck.