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As a French native speaker I find it even weirder. How is "libre" even pronounced in an English name?
by plonk 4y ago
As a French native speaker I find it even weirder. How is "libre" even pronounced in an English name?
- dsr_ 4y agoIn this case, I hear it as "lihb-ray-office" from random users.
- hoistbypetard 4y agoMost US English speakers will pronounce it the Spanish way.
- anthk 4y agoAs in Spanish.
- weberer 4y agoleeb-ray Most Americans at least heard of lucha libre, so the Spanish pronunciation is familiar.
- DoreenMichele 4y agoSort of like Libra but with less emphasis on the second vowel. Definitely no French R.
- schoen 4y agoI pronounce it as something like /'liːbreɪ/ (LEE-bray). (It definitely feels to me like a conscious foreignism.)
- DoreenMichele 4y agoMy mom's German. I grew up in a bilingual household. It's not a big deal to my mind. (shrug)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- anon_123g987 4y agoAccording to my dictionary, the pronunciation of "libretto" (an imported, but already established English word) in IPA is [lɪbr'etoʊ]. We can extrapolate from this.
- dwringer 4y agoWouldn't that lead us to pronounce it as "lib-RAW-fuss" instead of "LEE-bray-off-fuss"? Not that it wouldn't be funny.
- WorldMaker 4y agoIt would lead to that pronunciation as English likes its schwas and disappearing schwas, just like French does. (Someone else pointed out that "swallowed" schwa is closer to the French pronunciation, too.) I've lived in parts of the country where "libre" and its counterpart "gratis" were somewhat more common English vocabulary words, and their pronunciations were much more in line with "rhymes with zebra" (LEEB-ruh) and "rhymes with lattice" (GRAH-tuhs). To be fair, those were parts of the country with a bit of a "South midwestern" drawl and some might take those to be lower class, "less educated" pronunciations, but they certainly sounded a lot more like the natural pronunciations of such words in English to me.
- chrismorgan 4y agoAll I’ve heard in Australia (from only a very few outside my family) for LibreOffice is /'lɪbriː/, LI-bree.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]