How would you pronounce `jaq` other than `Jaques`[1]? It seems to be the default pronunciation.

[1] https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=Jacques...

"Yak", just like "javascript" is pronounced "yavascript"[1], and "JIF" peanut butter is pronounced "yif". Universally pronouncing "j" as "y" maximizes confused amusement.

[1] https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death...

Jack, Jaak, Jackyoo. Jay-Aye-Cue...

Also not the point; Jaques is more difficult to guess the correct pronunciation of than Jaq. That's the point.

Jaques is the French spelling of Jack/Jaak/Jak/Jaq. They're all pronounced the same, modulo irrelevant differences in vowel sounds.

> Jaques is the French spelling of Jack/Jaak/Jak/Jaq. They're all pronounced the same

They're not, though. The French pronunciation of 'j', as in the word Jaques is /ʒ/. In English, 'j' at the beginning of the word 'Jack' is pronounced /dʒ/. And 'Jaak' makes me think of Dutch, where that 'j' is pronounced as /j/.

In the prescriptivists fantasyland, yes.

In the real world, the descriptivist realizes an individual's pronunciation of the concept labelled Jac/Jack/Jacques/Jacq/Jak/etc. depends much more on the their personal context and stylistic choice than the spelling used.

I've heard many folks (American and otherwise) pronounce "Jack" many times in my life, and the range of utterances very comfortably includes Pépin's own "Jacques".

> I've heard many folks (American and otherwise) pronounce "Jack" many times in my life, and the range of utterances very comfortably includes Pépin's own "Jacques".

Then you have absolutely no ear for this kind of thing, unless you're including non-native speakers, which would be dishonest at best.

There’s no single way “native” speakers say any word, and the fact that you think there is shows you have had no exposure to the massive diversity of American accents.

What dialect of American English treats /ʒ/ and /dʒ/ as allophones at the beginning of a word (or any other context)? You've already (weirdly) accused me of being a prescriptivist, here's your chance to counter with some descriptive evidence of the kind of variation you are talking about.

I'd love to be wrong, because I'd learn a new thing. Please, educate me.

Listen, you’ll hear.

Nothing quite as weird as someone accusing me of not knowing how people in my own country say my own name.

The amount of misplaced confidence in this form is just absurd sometimes.

I'm also from the US and I've spent quite a lot of time listening to people speaking, specifically listening for how they realize phonemes. Your experience doesn't at all align with mine, either what I heard or what I've read about dialect variation in the US.

Anyway, sorry to have upset you.

- Is the text French?

- No.

QED.

- Is the word French?

- Yes.

QED.

My first instinct was to pronounce jaq as "jack".

Did you watch the video? That's exactly how "Jaques" is pronounced. It's French: you ignore everything but the non-s-consonants and the first vowel.

Jack and Jacques have a different "J":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fr-Paris--Jacques.ogg

Barely. Not enough to be a hinderance to mutual understanding.

To me, the proper pronunciation of Jacques sounds more like "Jock", so it does seem to be more than barely significant.

Does this https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=Jacques... really sound like Jock to you? There is a significant sharp "æ" sound, the same as in Jack/dʒæk

It sounds like [a] to me, not [æ].

The a in the name Jacques is pronounced as in the word father.

The a in the name Jack is pronounced as in cat.

As someone who has heard the name "Jack" pronounced by Americans many, many, many times in their life... that Jaques video sounds entirely in-range of the variety of pronunciations I hear for Jack.

Well, as one particular American, who has spoken to many, many other Americans in their life, I can only tell you what I think.

Something I find interesting is that Americans say the a in the word taco (a word borrowed from Spanish) with the a as in father, that is, [ɑː], but English people say the a as in cat, [æ]. Different dialects approximate the Spanish [a] differently.

No, /dʒæk/ is not /ʒak/

Found the Frenchmen :)

Yes they're slightly different in theory, but not in any way that would prohibit mutual understanding. Besides, if you're telling anyone about this library you're most certainly going to spell it out anyways.

I'm American and pronounce Jacques and Jack the way they described. If someone said [ʒak], I would transcribe it as Jacques, and if someone said [dʒæk], I would transcribe it as Jack. It may be a French name, but it's not very foreign. (If I heard [dʒak], I would assume the speaker is British and transcribe it as Jack).

I was confused reading people say that Jacques is pronounced the same as Jack, so it does seem like mutual understanding is inhibited.

It's just like how, even though Johann is a German name (though borrowed from Latin), I know to pronounce it in English not as [dʒoʊhæn] (the naive English pronunciation), but as [joʊhan], which is similar to the German pronunciation, [johan].

I’d say the amount of time before that sneak edit from Jacques to Jack lends credibility my claim of the two’s “essential interchangability”.

You're implying I subconsciously view them the same and pronounce them the same. But I don't. Maybe your dialect of English is different than mine, but I am not you. And it was there for a while because I use Hacker News on my phone and don't check it all the time.

My original sentence repeated the same word twice as a typo. It was this:

> I was confused reading people say that Jacques is pronounced the same as Jacques.

I realized my mistake and edited it to this:

> I was confused reading people say that Jacques is pronounced the same as Jack.

If we'd been discussing the words "chick" and "chic," I might have accidentally written:

> I was originally confused reading people say that chick is pronounced them the same as chick.

Then I'd realize my error and edit it to:

> I was originally confused reading people say that chick is pronounced them the same as chic.

That doesn't mean I actually pronounce "chick" the same way as "chic" and it doesn't make the words interchangeable in the dialect I speak. "Chic" is pronounced like "Sheikh," referring to the Arab leader, or like "Sheik" from the Legend of Zelda. I'll be confused if you say "a baby Sheikh" instead of "a baby chick," and if you say "chick fashion" instead of "chic fashion" I'll be thrown off but realize you meant "chic."

The implication I'm positing is "if you mix up words without notice, they are conceptually interchangeable". You can't disprove it by stating that words you didn't mix up without notice aren't interchangeable.

Or it means I simply made a a mistake.

> mix up without notice aren't interchangeable.

Sometimes I have accidentally written "chick" when I wrote "chic" due to autocorrect, just not during this conversation.

Regardless, I guess I can't make you believe me when I say what sounds natural to me. Ignore what I say if you really want. The fact that you insist that I say the two names interchangeably does not make it so.