You reminded me of this exchange.
Nix – it’s nish. 
Thanks for the feedback! Wow, the answers are all over the place. Sounds like more of a preference for “nitch” within the U.S., from what I can tell. I’m still in the same place–“nitch” sounds mispronounced, “neesh” sounds just a tiny bit pretentious (not knocking anyone else who uses “neesh”, I just don’t feel like I can pull it off as a midwesterner).
Maybe I’ll just try a synonym for the meaning I intend (not for a shallow recess in a wall, but for filling a metaphorical void, as in “finding your niche on life” or “filling a marketing niche”). Hmm, choices are “place, function, vocation, calling, métier, job”. None of those really work either. :dubious:
See, I say “brushetta” even though I know it’s “broosketta” because the latter has invariably caused a bit of confusion. The only exception is if I’m talking with an Italian native. Here, “yeero(s)” is almost the only pronunciation I hear for “gyros.” The only time I hear it with a hard “g” is from people for whom English is a second language or from non-locals. And the only time I hear “jie-roe” is from New Yorkers. So “yee-ro(s)” has no pretentious connotation to it here in Chicago. It’s standard. The only thing that may be pretentious or pedantic is prnouncing that final s for the singular. It should be “a gyros” not “a gyro,” but it usually drops the “s” to conform to English singular constructions.
For “niche,” I grew up with “neesh.” I sometimes say “nitch” now, but it’s a conscious effort to say it that way.
In biology classes every professor always did the nitch one (in an evolution/ecologic context) and it was not until about ten years ago or so that I ever heard the neesh one used … on a radio show and it jarred me. Made me think of some pronouncing the town Des Plaines “correctly” according to the rules of the its language of origin but not correct for what the town is actually called. IOW pretentious twit who does not really know the word. Since then I think the neesh one has come to predominate and I have gotten used to it.
Apparently the use in an ecological sense (rather than recess in a wall) originated in America in a paper from 1917 by a Californian scientist named Joseph Grinell. As that Abbot and Costello bit illustrates, Americans at that time would say that with the nitch version. That pronunciation goes back further though, which is why Lewis and Clark in 1805 named a cove “that dismal little nitch.”
Thus its modern popularity as a word that mean a place in the real or metaphorical ecological system came out of American ecology and was pronounced by those who coined its modern usage as “nitch” and many of us who learned the word in that context learned it said that way. But as it spread out of that academic context its pronunciation morphed to congruent with its French origin more often, especially out of America.
“Neesh.” I live in a French-speaking area.
Nietzche
We can argue until we work up an appetite. Then we can nosh. We can nosh on knishes.
And what of “buoy” by the way? I’m familiar with both pronunciations “boy” and “boo-ee”, but I don’t know which is “right” by either Yank or Brit standards.
Alex T., on jeopardy recently, pronounced it “neetch”. Never heard that one before. Is that a Canadian thing?
Tony Soprano’s moody high-school son decided he was a follower of “Nitch.”
In Britain, “boy”. I’ve always understood that “Boo-ee” was an American thing, even if it not universal there.
Mind, I’ve heard some Londoners pronounce “quay” as “kway” rather than “key”, but I put that down to inexperience. And I once had someone working for me who’d never heard the name “Buchanan” and had to have several goes at learning to pronounce it.
Me, too. Also, animals fill environmental neeshes.