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Original Usenet message from alt.ascii-art, 28 Dec 1994.
Re: GIF?

Re: GIF?

Benjamin Ledsham (ble...@shore.net) wrote:
: In article <pIr...@primenet.com>, ina...@primenet.com wrote:

: > You can't trust anyone now adays!  It doesn't make sense to be
: > pronounced 'jif'!  Graphic is a hard G, why would you change it to
: > a soft G in the abreviation?

: The "g" is pronounced as a "j" because it is followed by an "i" as in
: "giraffe" or "ginger".  The same holds true if the "g" is followed by an
: "e" as in "gelatin" or "gem".  There are exceptions, but this is the
: general rule.

My suspicion is that it has nothing to do with the general rules of
pronunciation.  (Or that "Graphic" is a hard "G".)  I presume that
initially people just said "gee" "eye" "eff", and the more familiar
they became with it and the faster they said it, the more it elided 
into "jif".  
-- 
                        |,/| ,. - _ ,
Diki                   /, \'.        "\  
dik...@mcs.com         { \    `         :  
Chicago IL              `;;_'     {    ;  
                        (,(, _.,>-(__,/

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From: dik...@MCS.COM (Diki Shamlian Gust)
Newsgroups: alt.ascii-art
Subject: Re: GIF?
Date: 28 Dec 1994 08:14:57 -0600
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