Comment by contrarian1234 4 days ago
The intention was great, but I find the word awkward. Leebraayyy
It looks/sounds foreign and feels a bit pretentious to use in conversation
.. or I feel like some gringo speaking broken Spanish
Sure sure, and Omelette, but once the word hits everyday usage it starts to feel different. There is a awkwardness hump to get through - and libre has a large one. So I feel it'll never catch on unfortunately
It already caught on once. It's already in the dictionary (though OED suggests it is obsolete). Though English was probably much closer to the Norman/French influence then. It may be the Tudor influence on unifying England under a common language was what killed the historic use of libre.
In British-English "libre" is French from Latin roots (liber). Though Spanish has the same word, I'd guess all Latin languages do.
We get liberty, liberal from the same root.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/libre gives a pronunciation which matches my own (lee-bruh).
> It looks/sounds foreign and feels a bit pretentious to use in conversation
“Entrepreneur” is worse on both counts, yet I don’t see those complaints about it. Must be because it’s associated with money.