On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 04:16:43PM -0500, David P James wrote: > Pigeon was roused into action on 2003-01-29 13:38 and wrote: > > > >How the British came to pronounce "lieutenant" "leftenant", I still > >don't know. The American pronunciation "lootenant" is surely much > >closer to the original - French, presumably. > > > > My guess is that the British (and proper Canadian) pronounciation of > lieutenant came from the fact that it would have been spelled > "levtenant" or something similar at some point in the past (there used > to be no difference in script between 'u' and 'v'). This probably would > have been reinforced by the notion of a "left hand man". There is no > equivalent in English that I can think of to the French pronounciation. > The best I can come up with is 'lee-uh' for the "lieu" portion, so > really not all that similar to the American (if it is closer it's by > accident). Far more likely for the American is the German 'loy' or 'loi' > beginning.
Sorry, me being sloppy. I should have said "lootenant" follows the usual rules of mangled pronunciation used by a native English speaker reading French and pronouncing it English style, so "in lieu" becomes "in loo" or "in liew", very rarely "in lee-uh". But as you say, it's pretty much what would happen to "Leutnant" as well. Pigeon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
