Main Page

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Welcome to Wikipedia

,
6,519,451 articles in English

From today's featured article

Steve Wilhite's slide at the 2013 Webby Awards
Steve Wilhite's slide at the 2013 Webby Awards

The pronunciation of GIF has been disputed since the 1990s. GIF, an acronym for the Graphics Interchange Format, is popularly pronounced in English as a one-syllable word. The most common pronunciations in English are /ɪf/ (listen) (with a soft g as in gin) and /ɡɪf/ (listen) (with a hard g as in gift), differing in the phoneme represented by the letter G. Many public figures and institutions have taken sides in the debate; Steve Wilhite, the file format's creator, gave a speech at the 2013 Webby Awards (slide pictured) arguing that only the soft g pronunciation is correct. Polls show that the hard g pronunciation is more common, although the frequency of each pronunciation varies by region; in addition, some speakers enunciate each letter in GIF, making it / ɛf/ (listen). English dictionaries generally accept both main alternatives as valid, and linguistic analyses show no clear advantage for either main pronunciation based on the pronunciation frequencies of similar English words. (Full article...)

Did you know ...

Moshassuck Valley Railroad
Moshassuck Valley Railroad

In the news

Jeanine Áñez in 2020
Jeanine Áñez

On this day

June 15

Queen Noor of Jordan
Queen Noor of Jordan
More anniversaries:

Today's featured picture

Guano

Guano is the accumulated excrement of seabirds and bats. As a manure, guano is a highly effective fertilizer due to its exceptionally high content of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium: key nutrients essential for plant growth. Guano was also, to a lesser extent, sought for the production of gunpowder and other explosive materials. The demand for guano in the 19th century spurred the human colonization of remote bird islands in many parts of the world, resulting in some of the first examples of United States colonialism and the expansion of the British Empire. However, the guano-mining process resulted in ecological degradation through the loss of millions of seabirds. This photograph, taken near Île-de-Bréhat in northwestern France, depicts a herring gull (Larus argentatus) excreting waste, which accumulates to form guano.

Photograph credit: Nicolas Sanchez

Other areas of Wikipedia

  • Community portal – The central hub for editors, with resources, links, tasks, and announcements.
  • Village pump – Forum for discussions about Wikipedia itself, including policies and technical issues.
  • Site news – Sources of news about Wikipedia and the broader Wikimedia movement.
  • Teahouse – Ask basic questions about using or editing Wikipedia.
  • Help desk – Ask questions about using or editing Wikipedia.
  • Reference desk – Ask research questions about encyclopedic topics.
  • Content portals – A unique way to navigate the encyclopedia.

Wikipedia's sister projects

Wikipedia is written by volunteer editors and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that also hosts a range of other volunteer projects:

Wikipedia languages