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[Xuanrui Qi <xuanrui AT nagoya-u.jp>]

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

I would say this is not exactly true (that's why we have phonological
patterns like silent h's in English, e.g. "hour", so it's very easy to
tell whether an English word is French in origin), but indeed this is
too far a digression.

-Xuanrui

On Thu, 2021-04-08 at 12:52 -0400, Andrew Appel wrote:
> > 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
>