A Tech-Culture Skirmish: Gifs

① The Graphics Interchange Format, a file type associated with web animations, is older than the world wide web itself.

② Yet debates over its pronunciation—with a hard "g", as in "gift", or a soft one, as in "giraffe"—rage on, and can make discussions about religion or politics seem comparatively civil.

③ A survey by Stack Overflow, a computer programmers' forum, purported to reflect a global consensus, but would have been fairer had each country's response data been weighted by population.

④ That done, the hard "g" wins out, leading the soft one by 44% to 32%.

⑤ Perhaps the most surprising outcome was the appearance of a third contender.

⑥ Enunciating each letter ("gee eye eff"), though more time-consuming than either single-syllable pronunciation, is common in Asia, and accounted for 21% of the population-weighted sample.

⑦ Around half of respondents from China and 70% from South Korea chose it.

⑧ A question for the ages grows only more complex.

▍生词好句

skirmish /ˈskəːmɪʃ/: n. 冲突

graphics /ˈɡrafɪks/: n. 图形

animation /anɪˈmeɪʃ(ə)n/: n. 动画

giraffe /dʒɪˈraf//dʒɪˈrɑːf/: n. 长颈鹿

rage /reɪdʒ/: vi. 激烈进行

civil /ˈsɪv(ə)l/: adj. 彬彬有礼的

purport /pəˈpɔːt/: vt. 标榜

consensus /kənˈsɛnsəs/: n. 共识

weight /weɪt/: vt. 赋权重

enunciate /ɪˈnʌnsɪeɪt/: vt. 清晰读出

time-consuming: adj. 耗时的

syllable /ˈsɪləb(ə)l/: n. 音节

▍补充词汇

sageliness within and kingliness without: 内圣外王