Bizarre Pronounciation

Friends,

It is 4:59 am and I am still wide awake. Probably the good dose of delicious nescafè that I drank earlier has taken its toll on my sleep. My eyes are wide awake since the moment the sun sets its course down 10 hours ago, at 7:00 pm.

As I was reading BBC news on my phone, I came across this interesting article about pronouncing the acronym of Graphical Interchange Format, "GIF".

GIF is one of the popular computer image file format for pictorial animation. All "GIF" file extensions are of the format "*.gif".

Anyway, the issue here is about bizarre pronounciation of "GIF". And apparently, the prominent Oxford English Dictionary (OED) dragged in this quarrel of pronounciation.

The OED was accused by the inventor of this computer image file format to wrongly publish a guide to pronounce the acronym "GIF". Apparently, OED says that "GIF" can be pronounced both ways: either with the hard "g" or the soft "j".

But, the inventor of this computer image file format wants the acronym "GIF" to be pronounced as "JIF".

My god.

Why do we need to drag the good old OED in this simple argument of pronouncing "GIF"? I don't simply understand.

To me, whether you pronounce the acronym "GIF" with a hard "g" or soft "j" makes no difference for both pronounciations are acceptable to my ears. As long as I can understand them, that should be okay.

In addition to this issue of pronouncing the acronym "GIF", let me extend it to a much more common abbreviation found everywhere. How would you pronounce the following abbreviations (or words):-

*resumè , as opposed to "resume"
*Adobe
*Tucson
*Yves
*Yvette
*sundry
*par excellence
*quay
*lychee
*Simon
*Perth

As always the case, whenever I flip through online dictionaries (or even Wikipedia), two forms of pronounciation will be given: American way of pronouncing the vocabularies of the English language, or the UK style of pronouncing the English words.

Oh, I must also tell you that there is a dedicated YouTube channel for pronouncing complex words.

And the channel apparently insists that there is one correct way of pronouncing some difficult words.

I don't know which version they are using in teaching the public, but I have a strong feeling that the UK style of pronounciation is advocated in this YouTube channel.

Jeez meez.

So much so for pronounciation of simple words.

How about pronouncing complex names? Especially Asian and Africa  names which can be tongue-twisting? Consider pronouncing the following names. How would you pronounce them?

*Ng
*Chng
*Sng
*Mba
*Kulube
*Bothasithe
*Koay

Okay. I'm gonna start enrolling in a phonetics course, now. Help!