Maybe it’s partly regional, but growing up it was always “nitch”. Like “Tom has really found his (nitch).” It only seems to have been making the transition to “neesh” in the last 10 years or so and it still sounds off to me.
Comment on Niche species
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 10 months agoI am confused, do you think niche rhymes with bitch?
BruisedMoose@piefed.social 10 months ago
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
It’s originally a French word so I would guess that nitch is likely the more recent mutation.
chunes@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yeah. “Nitch” didn’t show up until 1917 and got added to the Webster dictionary in 1961.
BruisedMoose@piefed.social 10 months ago
Oh, I agree. The Frenchish version just wasn’t around me growing up.
Velypso@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
It is commonly pronounced that way in the US, imo both pronunciations are correct.
chunes@lemmy.world 10 months ago
As an American if someone said “nitch” out loud I would secretly die inside and then do my best to remember this:
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FundMECFS@anarchist.nexus 10 months ago
It would make me cringe asf but similarly I would remember policing how people use words to uphold some „purity“ of language is mostly BS and your time can be spent in much better ways.
teft@piefed.social 10 months ago
Pretty much every language besides english has an institute dedicated to doing that exact thing. In spanish it’s the Royal Spanish Academy (La Real Academia Española).
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
I’ve never heard anybody pronounce it that way, and since we regularly tell children to “sound it out” to spell things I am going to go ahead and say no to adding letters personally.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 10 months ago
I mean that t is kinda already there if you don’t know that it’s French. Compared “beach”.
Sidhean@piefed.social 10 months ago
“Nitch”