Comic Strips

There are, there are just exceptions. For example, an e at the end of the word is silent. I’m certain you can give me a word where it’s not, but there are at least six in this paragraph alone where it is.

One of the most common words with a final "e" in that paragraph is "the" which not only has a final "e" sound, but has two different final "e" sounds depending on the context: "the end" uses a /ði/ pronunciation but "the word" uses a /ðə/ pronunciation. English is very stupid.

But, I agree with your assessment. English has rules, or at least patterns. "G" is most often hard, not soft, because "J" is available for the soft version, but there's no alternative for the hard version. English tends to follow patterns, and "gift" has a hard g, and it (and words based on it) are the only ones that start with "gif", so every "gif" word is hard. Because "t" (unlike "e") can't change the sounds before it, the pattern says that "gif" should have a hard "g".

If it were "gir", then there would be more debate. The word "giraffe" has a soft "g" but "girl" has a hard one, so the pattern is more muddy.

Also, people who coin words don't get to decide how they'll be pronounced. They can certainly try, but they'll often lose. There are plenty of words in English borrowed from other languages that not only sound nothing like the original language, but that sound nothing like they'd sound if they were English words. For example, "lingerie". It's a French word, but the English pronunciation sounds nothing like a French word. In fact, if someone just sounded out the word as if it were an English word, they'd probably get much closer to the French pronunciation than the awful "lawn-je-ray" which is the current accepted English pronunciation (though, they'd probably assume a hard "g" sound).

In this case, it's too bad that Steve Wilhite didn't have a background in linguistics or he would have realized that people would see "gif" and assume a hard "g". It was a losing fight from the start because he either didn't understand the assumptions people would have when they saw those letters, or he thought that somehow he could successfully fight the tide all by himself.