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Narishmayesterday at 10:47 PM2 repliesview on HN

I am from France. It's pronounced exactly the same here. Kids always joke about it when they first learn the English word 'bit'.


Replies

nothrabannosirtoday at 2:26 AM

It's pronounced the same only by people speaking English with a French accent. An American, Brit, Indian, or any other native speaker of English absolutely does not pronounce "bit" the same way a French person pronounces "une bite."

Rather than measuring whose French pedigree is longer, I will put down a wager on this. ₹3? :D

umanwizardtoday at 12:17 AM

I don’t doubt that you speak French. French people tend to have difficulty distinguishing those sounds because they are not distinguished in French. In English, they are: English has a much larger inventory of distinct vowel sounds than French (or indeed most European languages). In typical French-accented English, “bit” is indeed pronounced like the French word “bite”, but in native speaker English, it is not.

I am a native speaker of American English and also speak French quite well. If you neither accept personal experience, nor what is written on Wiktionary, what evidence would you accept?