In this particular instance, the Great Vowel Shift is to blame. What caused that is up for debate.
Comment on The "i" in Linux and Linus have different pronunciations even when they shouldn't.
Scrollone@feddit.it 6 months agoI’m Italian and I pronounce both "i"s in the same way. Why is English so strange?
samus12345@lemmy.world 6 months ago
DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 6 months ago
Blame the French.
ebc@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Hey, we pronounce both the same, too. Sorry English, that’s on you and you alone.
DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 6 months ago
Uh huh
And how would you pronounce it compared to a German?
ebc@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
The I as in “free”, but shorter (not drawn out) and the u as in “urban”, maybe? It’s hard to find English words where they make the french U sound, but it’s pronounced the same pretty much all the time.