Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
As for the battle between English and American, where the heck did you folks get the "f" in "lieutenant"?
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From the same place that we got an "r" in the pronunciation of "colonel": history. "Lieutenant" is a very old word, and the "lieu" part of it used to be pronounced with an unvoiced "v" on the end, which morphed into a voiced "f". It's one of those words where the pronunciation has diverged from the spelling over time.