A proposal to solve and/or further complicate the GIF pronunciation debate

Put simply:

• "soft-G" (/ʤɪf/) for the GIF file format, regardless of if the animation features are used,
• "hard-G" (/gɪf/) for any looping animation, regardless of its file format.

Rationale

In addition to having a debated pronunciation, the meaning of the word "GIF" has shifted over time. It originally used to mean the GIF image file format — the format defined in 1987 and updated in 1989. After the introduction of JPEG and PNG — better suited than GIF for lossy and lossless compression respectively — GIF eventually came to be used near-exclusively for its animation features. Now, "GIF" has become colloquially used for "any looping animation", even if the animation doesn't use the GIF file format.

The main two positions in the GIF pronunciation debate are "soft-G" (/ʤɪf/), the pronunciation intended by the creator of the format, and "hard-G" (/gɪf/), the pronunciation often used colloqially. It thus seems fitting to use the colloquial pronunciation /gɪf/ for the colloquial meaning "any looping animation", and the original pronunciation /ʤɪf/ for the original meaning "the GIF file format".