Counterpoint: Gift
Literally has gif in it and is pronounced with a hard ‘g’.
We don’t pronounced words by what other words they contain. “Americano” is not “American+o.” “Fare” is not “far+e.”
For some reason, the hard G advocates for “gif” seem to make up fake language rules to justify pronouncing it wrong.
Do you have any examples of words changed by adding a consonant? Additional vowels in words, such as your examples, usually change how a word is pronounced
Also, your attack in the second paragraph is unneeded and contributes nothing to the debate. If an argument cannot be based on logic alone, I ask that you do not make it.
Counter counter point. The inventor of the gif said it’s pronounced like the peanut butter. It’s already been settled.
Just because somebody who made a word wants to pronounce it a certain way doesn’t mean that’s others will pronounce it.
Heck, look at the at history of the word tomato. Came from the native Nahuatl word tomatl, which was changed to tomate for Spanish and then tomato for English. The British are closer to both the native Nahuatl and Spanish pronunciations of the word but few Americans will say it as “tuh-maa-tow”.
I mean that’s literally how it works. You pronounced the peanut butter with a soft J. You probably pronounce Lyft as Lift and JoS A Bank as Joseph A Bank. What a company chooses to name its product (gif was a product trying to be sold to software devs) they can choose however they want it to be pronounced. If you stop thinking of gif as a normal word and more as a product that was and continues to be sold then it makes a lot more sense why they literally gave it a catchphrase; “choosy developers choose gif”
