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Comment by Zababa | Hacker News Reader

"bit" (the english word) is pronounced exactly like "bite" (the french word), \bit\. The funny thing is that we often use "octet" to refer to bytes (which are pronounced /baɪt/ so no problems here) but we have no alternative for bit.

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But in French, the word "bit" (as a French word) would be pronounced /bi/, as with dit ? That the French chose to continue to pronounce it in the English fashion suggests that they rather like the joke opportunity :-)

I don't know where you learned French or English for that matter but in my pretty mainstream accents English "bit" and French "bite" are not pronounced very similarly. I can't imagine a competent speaker confusing them.

I'm a native French, and the french wiktionary seems to agree with me https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/bite https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/bit : Both are pronounced \bit\. You can listen to the pronunciation and it's exactly the same. I remember a few jokes around this in university. I've also found this where a few people suggest pronouncing "bit" exactly like "bite".

I don't really know what else to say other that I'm French, went through university in France and we had this confusion.

Huh interesting. Must just be an accent thing. I have a southern US accent in English and American accent with SW France influences in French. To me they aren't that similar but I do see how they could be. You're the native speaker though so I don't really have a leg to stand on here.

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