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Comment by mumblemumble | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I've ever heard someone pronounce 'bit' like 'bite' in French. But, in English, everyone pronounces 'coq' like 'cock'.

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Bit is pronounced like bite (i.e. cock) in french, Byte is pronounced as in english (although Octet is used too). At least that's how I say it.

It's pretty close but it's not quite the same vowel. Bite (fr) is pronounced [bit], bit (en) is pronounced [bɪt].

But the vowel is also different in cock [kɒk] vs coq [kɔk].

EDIT: I think I missed the point, if I'm reading "32 bits" in a french text then yes of course it sounds exactly like "32 bites".

> if I'm reading "32 bits" in a french text then yes of course it sounds exactly like "32 bites".

My impression in France was that "bite" had the "i" sound slightly longer than in "bit". Some of the pronounciations at https://forvo.com/word/bite/#fr definitely lengthen it, but not all. Unfortunately there is only one recording for https://forvo.com/word/bit/#fr for comparison.

Any difference there is will depend on the individual, and all in all they're pronounced very similarly if not exactly the same.

Seeing 8 GO mobile data plans was really weird the first time.

Then I remembered my telecom classes and we use octets because there's no confusion regarding byte sizes in older differet architectures.

Not everyone. I've always pronounced it "coke".

I do. As do all people I know of who speak french as their native language.

Hmm. Definitely non-native here. I wonder if I've misattributed some regional variation.

TBH, I can't really think of any other pronunciation.

In my head, bit's i is more like the one in poutine, bite's i is more like the one in vite.

How on earth do you pronounce it then?

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