This is a post for readers whose first language is not English. I’d like to try to clarify a couple of important points in online promotion using the English language.

English has its roots in several European languages as a result of repeated invasions.

The Romans, under Julius Caesar, invaded Britain around 2,000 years ago. So the original Celtic language became influenced by Latin.

The Angles, Saxons and Jutes from northern Europe invaded during the Dark Ages and Middle Ages, leaving a legacy that overlaid the language with even more tongues. The Vikings later added to the mix.

The Norman invasion under William the Conqueror also saw a heavy Old French layer added to the Saxon language in use at the time. It’s this French influence that I want to consider in this article, because of its impact on so many expressions linked to modern information technology.

Words like niche, cache and fiche (as in microfiche) are all in common use online.

What has complicated the whole issue is the most recent influence on the English language: US English.

Because America has played such a significant role in technological progress, most of the terms associated with it, including online coding and mark-up languages (like html) use US English, not UK English (used by everyone else, including Canada).

America, after the Revolution, decided that it would make English simpler for its citizens. So it introduced a whole range of unconventional spellings, despite it being the only English-speaking country to use them, even today. Words like center and meter replaced centre and metre. Jail replaced gaol. Z replaced s in many instances: realize replaced realise. And so on. (Although inconsistencies still abound. For example, surprise didn’t become surprize.)

But words like niche, cache and fiche — all originally French words — remained intact.

In French, these words are pronounced neesh, cash and feesh.

But English is a strange language, where spelling and pronunciation are determined by common usage, not by any formal rules. So it changes over time. But inconsistencies abound, and we now find ourselves being influenced by US usage…

Niche is now pronounced nitch, not neesh. But cache and fiche are still pronounced cash and feesh, not catch and fitch — although some writers claim that cache should be pronounced caish. (I have no idea why. I don’t know whether they insist on on pronouncing niche as n-eye-sh as in “eye”, or fiche as f-eye-sh.)

Confused?

If George Bernard Shaw were alive today he’d probably want to make them uniform so that the spoken and written language were consistent, as he did in this suggestion for spelling fish as “ghoti”:

• gh = f as in “enough”,
• o = i as in “women” and
• ti = sh as in “addition”.

Hence my headline which, if we apply the pattern of niche = nitch, would logically be pronounced “Scratch that itch before you catch a twitch!” (At least in the USA.)

After thousands of years, we now have a language riddled with inconsistencies and which, at times, means we can’t always write what we can say — and vice versa.

For example, if you were to dictate the next sentence, people would find it impossible to tell which written version would be correct:

“There are three ways to write two.”

It gets even worse when you try to pronounce word-endings like “ough”…

• Is it “uff” as in tough?
• Is it “oo” as in through?
• Is it “owe” as in though?
• Is it “ow” as in plough?
• Is it “off” as in trough?

And it gets worse…

• Is it “off” as in trough?
• or is it “owe” as in trough?

(Local usage can be either, depending on where you live.)

If it bothers you, get over it… you can’t change it any more than King Canute could stop the tide by yelling at it.

As always, it’s a case of “English as she is spoke”.