It only seems to be some Americans pronounce it nitch, so maybe regional there, though I couldn't guess where or which is most common. Here in the UK essentially always neesh.

It is from French after all.

Edit: American audiobooks on the other hand seem to go 100% with nitch for some unexplainable reason.

> It is from French after all.

This is funny to me because I often see people on the internet mentioning how strange it is that Americans leave off the 'h' when pronouncing 'herb'.

Kind of weird considering how often British speakers will drop h in other words:

“Allo, allo, what ave we ere,” said the stereotypical constable.

It is fairly unusual for American not to Anglicise pronunciations so it seems to stand as odd one out. Then again you kept the original "correct" pronunciation of herb - it was British English that changed for some reason.

Even the poshest Brit will put the H in herb now.

> It is fairly unusual for American not to Anglicise pronunciations

Anecdotal, but I think this is only true for French. For example, I think U.S. Americans (even those with no Latin American ethnic background) are much more likely to pronounce Spanish loanwords in a way that's closer to the original than Brits are.

If my anecdotal belief is correct, I suppose it's largely because of the very close contact between the U.K. and France on the one hand, and the U.S. and Latin America on the other.

Wait, some people pronounce herb with the 'h' not silent?

British: https://youglish.com/search/herb/uk?

Funnily enough the result I got is completely irrelevant: the sentence is "welcome her back to stage".

The sentence does make sense. Its actually:

"so please welcome Herb Kim back to stage."

Yeah, British people. Not sure about other English speaking nations.

To add to the irony, I have a British accent which often drops (initial) Hs but I cringe whenever I hear 'erbal'.

>It is from French after all.

And yet the British say "filet" with a hard 't'? I have never heard anything but the French pronunciation in the US.

I believe BEng distinguishes "fillet" (with a final t) from "filet" (without), the former having been borrowed from French when it still had a /t/ at the end, and the latter being a later re-borrowing (usually in phrases like filet mignon). Something like "filet of fish sandwich" comes across as a humourously fancy name for a pretty ordinary meal.

In mechanical drawing terminology, we pronounce it with a hard "t".

Fillets or rounds are placed features that round off or cap interior or exterior corners or features of a part.

I wonder if our French-Canadian friends to the north might be the reason Americans pronounce it the French way instead of the British way?

It's hard to say "filleted" with the french pronunciation.

it's like being skinned with an epenthetic vowel

That's about 50:50 - probably along regional lines.

According to the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary it is:

niche niːʃ nɪtʃ ǁ nɪtʃ — Preference poll, British English: niːʃ 95%, nɪtʃ 5%. In American English only nɪtʃ.

Hrm. American here. I always say "neesh," and I rarely hear "nitch" from other Americans. Wondering whether this is a regional thing.

I’m not familiar with that notation, can you provide some guidance on what those different pronunciations sound like in layman‘s terms?

niːʃ is "neesh". nɪtʃ is "nitch".

However, I'm American, and I anecdotally disagree that "nitch" is the only pronunciation. I exclusively use "neesh" and I regularly hear both pronunciations from other Americans.