It’s almost like there is no rule when pronouncing acronyms and people choose to pronounce them however sounds best to them. How do you pronounce the U in SCUBA? How do you pronounce the two As in NASA? The A in BASE jumping? The O in POG juice? The O in SONAR? The I in SIM card? The A in LASER? None of those are pronounced like the composite letters, so why is GIF so rigid?
The soft G with the following i is common. There are exceptions to that rule, so it really isn’t always a rule.
Also, GIF is an initialism, and an initialism pronounced as a word becomes an acronym. I really don’t want to debate whether an acronym has to obey “real” word rules.
It’s almost like there is no rule when pronouncing acronyms and people choose to pronounce them however sounds best to them. How do you pronounce the U in SCUBA? How do you pronounce the two As in NASA? The A in BASE jumping? The O in POG juice? The O in SONAR? The I in SIM card? The A in LASER? None of those are pronounced like the composite letters, so why is GIF so rigid?
It isn’t rigid.
The soft G with the following i is common. There are exceptions to that rule, so it really isn’t always a rule.
Also, GIF is an initialism, and an initialism pronounced as a word becomes an acronym. I really don’t want to debate whether an acronym has to obey “real” word rules.