as a linguist by education, i'll say why this happens.

in English, about 50% of our vocabulary comes to us directly from French. we inherited the pronunciation rules from French for G.

G in french is soft (like j) when it is followed by an unrounded vowel (i and e) and it is hard like (G as in good) when it is followed by a rounded vowel.

in French when you need to force a hard-G, the letter U comes after the G to force it to be hard. this is why the word guitar (guitare in French) has a U after the G.

the word gite (holiday rental home) is pronounced jeet, for example.

So, if we follow the rules GIF should be jif but it's GIF. it's an acronym not a proper word and therefore a rulebreaker.

#facts