GIF: hard ‘g’ and soft ‘g’ pronunciations are both in use. See our #Tumblr post: oxford.ly/10VzMgb
— The OED (@OED) 23 maggio 2013
The recent considerations on the pronunciation of the word GIF in English (“g” as plosive or affricate) calls our attention as Scritture Brevi because of the peculiar relationship between writing and pronunciation, notably in the case of acronyms.
The phonetics of acronyms isn’t submitted to a predetermined rule, which is not a surprise for English, since speakers are used to a discrepancy between writing and sounds, but it may be a puzzling way for Italian.
Some acronyms are treated as “words” and accordingly managed in pronunciation (ex. vip [‘vip]), some others always remain a kind of “sequence of letters” (ex. tv [ti’vi]).
On purpose I’m using as examples two words which are common to English and Italian, to show that we are dealing with a general and shared question.
Our interest is to point out that the starting point here is the written form, whereas pronunciation is a consequence of it.
About acronyms and initialisms by Scritture Brevi, have a look here and here.
Francesca Chiusaroli, Scritture Brevi
Tuesday, 28th May 2013
New post: You can pronounce “GIF” any way you like: bit.ly/13PhIbC
— Stan Carey (@StanCarey) 24 maggio 2013
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