this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2025
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Now try: "Colonel"
As a native speaker, I think it's orders of magnitude worse.
Y'all are out here gonna ignore "Lieutenant" as 'LeFtenant' ?
TBF, Americans say Loo-ten-unt. I don't know where the British got the F, but you can't use the meme from the post for it!
Because the position was literally the “left tenet of the king.” His most trusted advisor would be on his right tenant and the left would be the person protecting his blind non dominant side.
Now funny enough both Leuf and lieu spellings exist since about the same time. The lieu tenant comes from the French “in lieu of,” so in lieu of the king that was the next commander. I am not etymologist but from what I understand both explanations are correct. Basically convergent evolution of the word and its meaning.
'Left tenet of the king' is simply untrue, the answer is that no one knows — hence the debate.
As an etymologist- this is… NONSENSE. Fucking WHY the need to weigh in on things you know nothing about?
I went after 'em.
Edit: also, sorry admins — I have not read the rules I just try my best to not be shithead.
How would you pronounce the lieu then? It comes out as leeu or loo.
Loo, leeu sounds not American English as a syllable
Why'd you put cologne in your colon, Colonel?
It seems to have the same reason: English scholars thinking that it would be smart to adopt an orthography that doesn't match the pronounciation, to be more consistent with latin. i.e. the opposite of what modern-day spelling reforms usually try to do.
https://nowiknow.com/the-silent-and-not-so-silent-l/
Apparently "coronel" was first borrowed from French. No surprise there I guess, with the superfluous vowel in the middle.
But the spelling is fucked up because they changed the spelling to the Italian one without changing the pronounciation. It's like the worst of both worlds, the "worlds" being "keep the French version" and "change spelling and pronounciation to the Italian version".
All the weird words for military purposes especially relating to officer ranks come from french. You can blame the Normans (and by extension once again everything is scandavia's fault) or that whole time period where England and France were basically constantly at war, or once again everything is Napoleon's fault.
France had a long period as the dominant land power of Europe and that resulted in a lot of military organization words in most European languages being pulled from them. It's similar to how a lot of military traditions and styles come from Prussia.
"Why hello there, KERNULL! How goes the war?"
Apparently the word had quite the journey on its way to American mouths. It seems to have started its life in Italian as "colonnello," meaning "column of soldiers," derived from "colonna" meaning "column". And then the French got a hold of it... I believe I dont need to explain any further why the word became so fucked... lol.
The word in French is pronounced exactly the way it's spelled, with the same linguistic origins as in Italian. It's really the British that fucked up the pronunciation all on their own.