this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2025
277 points (94.5% liked)

Ask Lemmy

28040 readers
1487 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Please state in which country your phrase tends to be used, what the phrase is, and what it should be.

Example:

In America, recently came across "back-petal", instead of back-pedal. Also, still hearing "for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes".

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] witty_username@feddit.nl 25 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Niche is pronounced neesh and not nitch

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I heard Nice things about France

[–] milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago

I heard things about niche, France.

[–] AEsheron@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Neesh is actually the much newer pronunciation apparently, TIL.

[–] witty_username@feddit.nl 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What do you base that on?
According to the pronunciations on Wiktionary, nitch is Californian

[–] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

\NICH\ is the more common one and the older of the two pronunciations. It is the only pronunciation given for the word in all English dictionaries until the 20th century, when \NEESH\ was first listed as a pronunciation variant in Daniel Jones's English Pronouncing Dictionary (1917). \NEESH\ wasn’t listed as a pronunciation in our dictionaries until our 1961 Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, and it wasn’t entered into our smaller Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary until 1993. Even then, it was marked in the Collegiate as a pronunciation that was in educated use but not considered acceptable until 2003.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/niche

[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's confusing because the way it's spelled makes it look French, so if you read it in a book and didn't hear other people say it, you might think it was "Neech" if you know French also.

Just like "voila" you might think is said the French way, like it's spelled, but a lot of English speakers say "walla".

[–] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I subscribe to the view that people mispronouncing things have read more stuff rather than heard things, so of course I'm not looking down on them for that. I didn't realize until recently that quinoa wasn't kwin-OH-ah for awhile, or even in my youthful fondness for Greek myths that the goddess wasn't called ah-fro-DAIT.

[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Another big one is "conscience". How could that be read as anything but "con science?"

[–] xapr@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 6 days ago

English pronunciation is completely all over the place, so much so that you frequently cannot predict how a word is supposed to be pronounced. I usually don't pay too much attention to pronunciation errors because of that.

[–] xapr@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Just like “voila” you might think is said the French way, like it’s spelled, but a lot of English speakers say “walla”.

Ugh, I can't agree with this one. I think a lot of English speakers say "walla" because they think it's spelled "walla".

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

I've heard this one like 3 times in the last month on youtube and it bothers me a lot

[–] sik0fewl@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You should google the word "dialect" and see where it takes you.

[–] witty_username@feddit.nl 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

To search results about the word dialect

[–] sik0fewl@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You were supposed to keep clicking.

[–] witty_username@feddit.nl 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Instructions unclear. Am now enrolled in a course on pronunciation

[–] sik0fewl@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago

It's a start. Hopefully it's not for Vietnamese.

[–] optissima@lemmy.ml -4 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] Lesrid@lemm.ee 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

If I had to take a guess I would venture that this person says "It's not my nitch." and "wow that product is very neesh."

I swear I've met someone like this now that I think about it

[–] optissima@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago

You got it, dialects are a widely varying thing!

[–] JackFrostNCola@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I suppose, if the context is if you prefer to be correct or not?

[–] optissima@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago

Lol "being correct" in a language. Take a course in linguistics.