Please try not to argue

So, first thing you have to remember is that modern English is a super weird language that has its roots in 3 different languages and easily imports words from other languages (but doesn't modify the spelling to fit existing rules).

In English, generally, when you have a G followed by a vowel which is then followed by a consonant, the hard sound is used like Girafe, Gift, and Guffaw use the hard G sound.

But there's also Gin, Gem, Gym, Geo, and Gel. Words that have a G, then a vowel, then a consonant that uses the soft G sound (interchangeable with a J). What's the deal with those?

Funny story: those words come from other languages. When they entered the English language, no one bothered to change their spellings to reflect how they're pronounced!

But why is GIF a hard G and not a soft G? Because it's an acronym, and English Acronyms tend to follow the root word pronunciations. Graphic Interchange Format. Graphic is a hard G.

So GIF uses a hard G.

But why would anyone use the soft G?

Because Steve Wilhite of CompuServe, when deciding on the pronunciation, said he deliberately chose to echo the American peanut butter brand, Jif, and CompuServe employees would often say “Choosy developers choose GIF(jif)”, playing off of Jif’s television commercials.

Anyone using that soft G sound is trying to show off how much history they know by being hipster developers.

Don't be a hipster developer, use the Hard G.

Who woulda thunk that something even more loathsome and annoying and in general an overall affront to anything they dare latch on to than Hipsters would come along mid 2016?

Yet unlike Hipsters, whose every carefully coiffed hair follicle is seemingly strategically placed to frame an overly exaggerated smug plasticalated pretentious pompous psuedo intellectual souless scene hopping hollow shell of a persona, these perpetually disheveled neckbeards prize their own mental incapacity like congenital limitations were the greatest thing since the invention of the rubber ducky,,,

But there's also jpeg which stands for "Joint Photographic Experts Group" but the "p" is pronounced like a "p" and not a "ph" not to mention scuba (Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) for the "u" and the "e" laser (Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation)

Welcome to English. Their our know rules

I don't think there is any standardized pronunciation.

Gif

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it says in the name

Gif e because jif is trademarked

Jif due to the fact that the creator wanted them pronounced that way

Look it up

I don't want to know how it's pronounced, I want to know how people think it's pronounced.

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