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[Andrew Appel <appel AT princeton.edu>]

From: "Clément Pit-Claudel" <cpitclaudel AT gmail.com>


Andrew, I don't understand why you write this.  I've never heard "byte" pronounced the same as "bit" in French (and we routinely use the word "byte" in French).

Ah, but it's precisely because "byte" is an English word and not a French word that it is pronounced in (approximately) the English way;  the French word is "octet".   If "byte" were truly a French word, it would probably be pronounced in a French way.

In contrast, "bit" is both an English word (pronounced one way) and a French word (pronounced a different way).  

And this argument does not depend on the fact that "bit" originated in English and made its way into French;  "bit" is now a French word.  As you probably know, about 30% of the words in English were originally French words, but 

  (a) that doesn't make them any less English, and

  (b) we don't pronounce them in the French way.

But perhaps we can drop this argument, because I don't care to defend this position any more . . . 

-- Andrew