Ah, internet debates. They’re silly but they can be the difference between a bad day and a slightly less bad day. With that in mind, Jif peanut butter is finally putting the GIF pronunciation debate to rest by claiming the soft “g” pronunciation while GIF gets the hard “g” one.
The J.M. Smucker Company, which makes Jif, has decided to team up with GIPHY and come up with a special jar of Jif peanut butter – but with a twist! They are switching up the label with “Gif” so that, if you keep the two jars beside each other, you’d realize the obvious difference in how each word should be pronounced.
The debate might be dumb to some, but it has been a long debate – both on and off the internet. Facebook had a poll about it back in 2017 and in 2016 Hillary Clinton had said GIF with the hard “g” at a fundraiser. On the other hand, I remember almost losing friends to this debate.
But, to be fair, it makes sense to pronounce GIF with a hard “g” since the acronym stands for “Graphics Interchange Format” and, well, graphics is pronounced with a hard “g”. So, it should obviously translate to GIF as well.
However, none of it probably matters, since the creator of GIF, Steve Wilhite, had declared back in 2013 that the word should be pronounced ‘Jif”.
Regardless of whichever side of the spectrum you stand on, if you want the peanut butter jar with “GIF” on it, you can get that on Amazon, just in time for National Peanut Butter Lover’s Day on March 1. It is special-edition, after all.
