All English is based on etymology which is why it’s such a hard language to learn. Looking at how a word is spelled always takes second place to where it comes from.
GIF was pronounced with soft g since it came out, back in the 80s/90s when it was shared on AOL and CompuServe. Year, decades, later it came back into social media with Reddit and Twitter, and people pronounced it based on what it looked like it would sound like, which is most similar to hard g like gift.
That doesn’t mean GIF never had a soft g. It just shows how old you are or when you discovered it when you use the hard g.
Looking at how a word is spelled always takes second place to where it comes from.
Where it comes from matters less than historic pronunciations.
“Lawn-jer-ay” is how most of the English word pronounces “lingerie” even though that’s nothing like how it’s pronounced in French, nor is it anything like what you’d pronounce if you sounded out those letters assuming it was an English word.
“Lieutenant” is pronounced completely differently in the UK vs the US. It’s etymology is also French, but neither English pronunciation is at all close to the French. Somehow the British get an “f” sound in there, which can’t be explained by spelling or etymology, and somehow the American pronunciation turns “ieu” into an “oo” sound.
As for “gif”, the “aol and compuserve” thing shows the problem: text based forums. The first time people encountered the word was by reading it. As an unfamiliar word, they mostly went with the common English rule of finding similar words. In this case, the only other words with “gif” are “gift” and words based on “gift”. Since that has a hard G, from the very start people have been using the hard “G” sound.
All English is based on etymology which is why it’s such a hard language to learn. Looking at how a word is spelled always takes second place to where it comes from.
GIF was pronounced with soft g since it came out, back in the 80s/90s when it was shared on AOL and CompuServe. Year, decades, later it came back into social media with Reddit and Twitter, and people pronounced it based on what it looked like it would sound like, which is most similar to hard g like gift.
That doesn’t mean GIF never had a soft g. It just shows how old you are or when you discovered it when you use the hard g.
Where it comes from matters less than historic pronunciations.
“Lawn-jer-ay” is how most of the English word pronounces “lingerie” even though that’s nothing like how it’s pronounced in French, nor is it anything like what you’d pronounce if you sounded out those letters assuming it was an English word.
“Lieutenant” is pronounced completely differently in the UK vs the US. It’s etymology is also French, but neither English pronunciation is at all close to the French. Somehow the British get an “f” sound in there, which can’t be explained by spelling or etymology, and somehow the American pronunciation turns “ieu” into an “oo” sound.
As for “gif”, the “aol and compuserve” thing shows the problem: text based forums. The first time people encountered the word was by reading it. As an unfamiliar word, they mostly went with the common English rule of finding similar words. In this case, the only other words with “gif” are “gift” and words based on “gift”. Since that has a hard G, from the very start people have been using the hard “G” sound.