Jif Peanut Butter Enters The Gif Pronunciation Debate
Because apparently moms aren’t too choosy anymore and Jif needs to drum up some cheap advertising, Jif has teamed up with searchable gif database Giphy to announce their very firm belief that gif is pronounced with a hard G like gift without the T, and not like their peanut butter brand. Some more info on this breaking news while I conduct a crunchy versus smooth workplace poll:
We know there’s only one Jif and it’s peanut butter. If you’re looking for all the GIFs, there’s only one Giphy,” the site’s co-founder and CEO Alex Chung said in a statement. “If you’re a soft G, please visit Jif.com. If you’re a hard G, thank you, we know you’re right.”
The debate has raged since 1987 when GIFs, known now for their fun looping videos, first surfaced. However, the format’s creator, Steve Wilhite, told the New York Times in 2013 that, despite popular opinion, it should strictly be pronounced like the peanut butter brand and not like “gift” without the T.
First of all, if the gif’s creator says it’s pronounced jif, then it’s pronounced jif. That’s one of the perks of inventing something — you get to name it. That said, Steve was wrong and should have insisted it was pronounced with a hard G like a normal person. I mean it stands for graphic interchange format — where the hell do you get the j sound? But, as I said before, if you invent it you get to name it, and we should respect Steve for all the LOLs the format has brought us, and Jif has no right trying to argue. *licking spoon* Skippy’s way better anyways
Source: Geekologie
No Comments