SQL, gif, e-mail... (was Re: [thechat] who thought *this* was agood idea?)

[David McCreath]

Scott Dexter wrote:

 >>I also say  pronounce "gif" like "jiff" (peanut butter), even
 >>
 >
 > AAAAHHHHH!!!! run away!!
 >
 > it's a soft G! (like "give")

Uhhh ... isn't that the other way around? "give" has a hard "g" and "gee
whiz" has a soft "g". Maybe my edi-ma-cation is failing me.

As for GIF, it stands for "Graphics Interchange Format", so why would
you pronounce it "jif"? I've never understood that. I've always said "ghif".

Then there was the time when some guy cold-called at a design company
where I worked and kept asking if we needed any "vermal" programmers. It
took me five minutes to realize that he meant "VRML" (Virtual Reality
Modeling Language). Vermal? Vermal?

"Hi, I'm David and I'm fluent in hetamel and exmal."

I also feel that the up-and-coming graphic format "Portable Network
Graphic" should be pronounce "Pong" to differentiate from the act of
"pinging" on a network, and also to differentiate it from the duck.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140502416/

(Be sure to read the first customer comment. This is an old chestnut,
but I still meet lots of people who never have.)

David