this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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What did the creator of the GIF name them? Imagine if a bunch of people read your name wrong, then when you told them how it’s pronounced said that they don’t care, and your mom was wrong to pronounce your name that way.
Eh, I prefer the descriptivist method of language. It's how language evolves over time.
Comparing it to a personal name is a false equivalence. GIF is an acronym, people could enunciate each letter if they so preferred and it would be more accurate/true to creation than even the creator's opinion of how to pronounce it.
I see what you’re saying, and to a point I agree. I see it as people reading it a certain way in their head and becoming attached to how they think it should sound. This happens often because English words especially can have all manner of exceptions to the usual rules of spelling and grammar. There is nothing embarrassing about reading, or at least there shouldn’t be. What I DO find embarrassing is when people find out that they’re pronouncing something differently and flat out disagree with the world about its actual pronounciation.
Man, you must be embarrassed all the time when you hear British or American people talk.
Somehow the world can survive and we can understand one another with very different pronunciations of words like "Aluminum", but this... THIS WILL NOT STAND!
I mean, it's only embarrassing for them - if they want to be loud, proud, and wrong that's okay.
But at the same time, they may well set the trend for how it's pronounced in the future.
Lord knows, waDer (i.e. water) started somewhere...
Edit: I'm guessing I offended someone by implying that saying 'wadder' is the wrong way to say water, hahaha.