Search This Blog. Friday, July 24, What the F is an F doing in "lieutenant"? As I mentioned last week, as a result of my CBC interview about Stuart McLean's pronunciations of "schedule" and "raspberry" , I've had a number of queries about other pronunciations. First up: lieutenant and colonel. Now the question is, why do some people say loo tenant and others lef tenant? Loo tenant is closer to the Old French pronunciation, but right from our earliest evidence, in the s and s, we have spellings that indicate that both pronunciations existed.
Probably the English had a hard time pronouncing French, or they may have confused lieu with the English word they already knew, "leave" Or they confused the written "u" with a "v. For whatever reason, the " loo -" version died out of British English but survived in American English, which tends to maintain older pronunciations, for example " herb ". Since Americans were the founders of Canadian English when the Loyalists moved here, we also inherited " loo tenant" But the Canadian Forces have always been strongly influenced by the British, so lef tenant is the official pronunciation there.
Canadian English is not simple! What do YOU say? English pronunciation must drive second-language learners mad! When the French borrowed this word, they had a hard time saying "colonel" with two "l"'s though they manage to do it now. So the first "l" got changed to an "r" and they ended up with coronel , which is what got borrowed into English in the s and then scrunched down in the pronunciation to ker-nel.
You might call it an anachronism. Dylan Hollingsworth, a bike courier near St. According to Charles Boberg, a professor of linguistics who studies Canadian English at McGill University, the original British way of saying the word has been going out of style for decades.
Their children, meanwhile, used the traditional pronunciation even less — 19 per cent among boys and 14 per cent for girls. University of Toronto linguist Aaron Dinkin agrees the British pronunciation seems to be losing out, and suggests the massive cultural influence of our southern neighbours is a big factor. Taylor Roberts, a linguist in Toronto who studied at York University, said the two pronunciations have also more in common than you might think. He added, however, that they are willing to change their tune if it better reflects the reality of contemporary Canadian English.
After the post, I will try to research the etymology of 'Lieutenant. The Lieutenant always had someone guarding the sword when the Commanding Officer was wearing it. The sword is carried on the left hip. That person stood to the 'left' of the Lieutenant. Therefore, he was called the Left Tenant because he was second in command to the Lieutenant. If the Lieutenant was killed, the Left Tenant took the sword and became the Lieutenant.
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Active 4 months ago. Viewed k times. Improve this question. Justin Morgan Justin Morgan 1 1 gold badge 5 5 silver badges 6 6 bronze badges. The members of the Army and Royal Air Force say "lef-tenant", but in the Royal Navy that's a solecism "loo-tenant" there.
BrianHooper I am not sure that is exactly correct. I recall when joining the Canadian Navy back in the seventies that the pronunciation was more like "le tenant" or "luh tenant", not sure how to write it, and followed Royal Navy usage, so it was essentially a third way to pronounce the word. By the way I was a sub-lieutenant so did pay some attention to how to pronounce and especially how the captain pronounced it BrianHooper Every member of the Royal Navy I've met a considerable number, from a wide variety of branches has pronounced it 'lef-tenant'.
Show 4 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Jon Purdy Jon Purdy It's simply an attempt for English speakers to pronunce French phonemes, I don't believe there's an additional reason. The word appeared in English as "lieutenant", and an alternative "leftenant" was made to stick to the pronunciation. The pronunciation being very difficult for English speaker.
The "lefttenant" doesn't exist in French, at least, I didn't find it, I will search further. Old French is not one language, it's a bunch of dialects. And lieutenant means place keeper lit. In Spanish and Portuguese, they dropped the lieu [lugar], and kept teniente and tenente, respectively.
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