As a guy from Finland, where 99% of the time we pronounce words just as they're written, i'm very interested in finding out the reason saying "colonel" sounds like the word "kernel". Finnish might be hard for foreigners to learn, but at least once they learn it, there's no big surprises with the pronunciation of any words they might encounter. No, they're going to have a problem with how the word house (and every other similar word) can go from "talo" to "talossa", "taloissa", "taloissakin", "taloista" and so on... Instead of saying something is IN the house, we say "taloSSA", instead of FROM the house, it's "taloSTA". This has been your Finnish-lesson for today...
In this case I'm going to blame the German language for it. The grade or rank in German is Leutnant, if we misread a u as a v because of poor handwriting we get Levtnant, add an extra vowel to make it easier to say and hey presto Left-tenant.
Exactly, we even use the word lieu in English and we pronounce it as 'loo' as well, so both words are used-a tenant in lieu of another. It's just one of those funny etymological oddities that has never changed.
Hahaha, that literal translation's great. I can't believe I didn't think of it before. But seriously, "lieu" in that word doesn't mean location, it means replacement. There's an expression in french, "au lieu de", which is used like "instead of". So lieutenant is something like "one who holds instead of -".
Lieu means "place", in French (and in archaic English) Lieutenant = place holder. Lieutenants hold the place of captains, lieutenant colonels hold the place of colonels, and lieutenant generals hold the place of generals (four-star General is just "general", at least here in the US Army)
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Ok so I am french speaker and I don't understand a word of what you are saying :p But it can be because I don't know the french of the time. Or because it is not the good ethymology : "Lieutenant", "Lieu" Tenant" "Lieu" : "place". "Tenant" = "holder". The one who hold the place, not the one who is "left" tenant. But I can be wrong, I just feel it more possible than "Lieu" meaning "Left". I never heard of that and it is my mothertong.
Grégory Fleury No, my dear romance speaking friend. "Lieu" means just "place" and it never meant "left", "right" or anything else. this goes the same for all other romance languages such as italian, spanish, romanian etc. Lieu-tenant is place-holder but it should not be translated as "left in charge" because it would imply the comander is no longer present so he left someone in charge with his comand - instead the lieutenant is the place holder of the comander for a speciffic task on the comand execution/activity (since the comander can't multiply himself). sorry for the spelling and i hope you're not more confused than before.
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No this is the perfect answer I was looking for. I am not a linguist and though I love to understand languages I don't have the knowledge, I only have my own observations. Having a better understanding through your educated comment is a good thing. Thank you.
* * that works for sub-alterns but not for loo-tenant commanders or left-tenant kernels who were often left in charge of a boat or regiment. now however left-tenant colonels are the lead officers of regiments because the British army is tiny.
You're correct Grégory Fleury. What I think it a misconception that originates from the word "Lieu" in English can be used synonymously with "Instead of" or "in place of". e.g. "He gave us an IOU in lieu of cash", "The company issued additional shares to shareholders in lieu of a cash dividend. "With Tom gone, Mary as was in charge as of lieu".
It's short for "Sir Lindy-KeepAStiffUpperlip-Beige." Btw, 'beige' is of course *not* derived from the French word for the colour beige. Certainly *NOT.*
Of course not, since we all know the proper way to say the "beige" part of "Lindybiege" is actually koftou. Yah know, "Sir Lindy-KeepAStiffUpperlip-Koftou". There's no way you can confuse that with that dirty French word for brown.
Japan is also a left-driving country. Incidentally it's also an Island nation, like the UK. So they're crazies too anyway. Indonesia (lots of islands, lots of crazies) is also left-driving. No explanation for either Guyana or Surinam, both are neighbouring coastal countries on top of Brazil. And both are left-driving.
Lieutenant in Spanish is Lugar Teniente or just Teniente for short. It literally means place holder. The Lieutenant is left as tenant of the Captains authority.... And I typed too soon, as you then went over this in a way. Nice. Awesome video.
Following the same line of reasoning (getting back to the French roots of the word), should we pronounce "colonel" as "coll-onn-ell" rather than "kernel"?
The usual solution is to change the spelling to better reflect the pronunciation (because spoken languages tend to do whatever the hell they want). English spelling reform, yo!
British English is famous for effing up pronunciations. Keeping "foreign" or old spelling but re-pronounciate them. Wednesday, Worcestershire Sauce, Colonel, Lieutenant, etc. Otoh it's done a LOT in ALL English... English spelling visavi pronunciation correlation is... Sketchy at best... Just look at what you name the letters in the alphabet contra how they are pronounced. The letter "e" is named after the sound of the letter "i", the sound "a" is very often spelled with a "u", as in "pug" or "gun" for instance... It's riddled with such things...
George Percy, second in command to Governor Thomas West de la Warr, spelled it "Leftenante" and "Lieftennantt" in his journal. This was written in the early 1600s in Virginia, but it leads me to believe part of the issue is lack of standardized spelling in English until about 200 years ago. And the fact that as usual, Lloyd/Lindy is wrong.
Another hypothesis I've heard of says that because the word started being used back when the letters u and v were not yet fully differentiated, and sometimes used in the opposite way we use them today, some people misread lieutenant as lievtenant, and the misreading caught on.
Hi Matt, I have two points for you to consider about this word. I actually believe they would contradict each other, but I am not an expert enough to say which one is true... Firstly, one has to remember that the word is not only spelled in France and Britain like this, here in Germany, the equivalent rank is spelled "Leutnant" - which is easily achievable by simply dropping a few letters. As far as I know, it was introduced during the napoleonic era, frist in the french spelling, before it evolved to its current form. My second point is about the early medieval spelling. If I remember correctly, there was only one letter representing both "u" and "v", before it separated into the modern characters. Could it be that the sound of the word began to differ independently from the spelling, as the Britsh began pronouncing it with an "f" for the "v" and the French turned towards the "u"? Anyway, great video! another Matt
You're right, at the time of the Conquest (and for more than a century after), the vast majority of documents would have been written in the Carolingian script or Uncial and its derivatives, all of which lack a u/v distinction. U/v distinction came about with the early Gothic scripts starting around 1200, but many documents would have still been written in the earlier scripts for quite a long time after. The U/V thing seems like it would make a lot of sense to me, "lievtenant" could easily blur into "lieftenant," and over centuries a common mispronunciation from 1100 ended up sticking.
Yeah, as far as I know, the original version used within the german dialects was "Lieutenant", just like everyone else would spell it. But during the 19th century sometime, it changed to its current version "Leutnant". So the german spelling dropped the "i" and the second "e". As for the reason for this change, I could only speculate, it may well be the strong animosity between France and Germany during the latter half of the 19th century, but one can hardly deny that the two words are too close to be not closely related.
*fireman23* Nah, the Germans kept using the same word but they shortened it because that was more convenient for them. If they were taking animosity between both countries into consideration, they would have changed it for a German word. Like "Ersatzführer" or something. German is not my native language obviously, but for those non Germans who think 'Führer' is tainted, a 'Zugführer' in German can mean platoon leader or traindriver.
Of course you could be right that it was simply for convenience, frankly I don't know.It might be that the new spelling was just easier to pronounce for them. But thinking about events like the 1870 war, or the general animosity that continued until after ww2, I think it is also a possibility. Perhaps the real reason will never be known for certain. On the other hand, you're right, the nazis later used entirely different ranks for their organizations like the SS, most likely to avoid words from other languages, particularly french: e.g. Major became Sturmbannführer...
"The British are wrong." Well no big surprise to every non-brit out there ;) Just kidding, nice to see that there are still people out there who admit their mistakes and put things right :-)
I have seen 17th century texts which write it as Leftenant. There were a few which were Lieftenant too. I think the original French spelling came into the English language a bit later, sometime between the late 17th and mid 18th century as spellings became more standardised and because English was held in low regard compared to Romance languages. French pronunciation is also definetly more Lieu (lee-uh) than loo. I think some parts of France might say Loo, but not the majority.
"The Norman French phrase 'lieutenant' may have predated the Latin rendering 'locum tenens'. The earliest examples in OED are all from Scotland, and it seems even then that the "Lefftenant" pronunciation was being used (Barbour's "Bruce" has "luftenand" in the mid 14th century). Moreoever an Old French rending of lieu was "luef". The British pronunciation was still used in the USA in 1793 but had almost died out except in military circles by 1893. One could explain this the influence of non-British immigrants applying standard French pronunciation to a word with apparently obvious French origins." Ross Turner, St Monans Fife
in german we did it worse. we germanised the word to "leutnant" which makes no sense any more. but other than that, historically both terms were used, and both have the same meaning. when in the germanic area during the 16th century standing armies were evolving (prior to that feudal levies had no such rigid structure), a captain (hauptmann) was the leader of a company. the lieutenant was not a commander of his own, but assisted the captain, mainly in commanding the company, when the captain was absent. so lieutenant is the guy who is the tenant of the position in lieu of the captain. a leftenant is the tenant, when the captain has left. both make perfect sense.
A Leutnant still is not the comander of his own. A Leutnant in general terms is the leader of the 1st platton of a company and beeing 2iC. However german etymology is a bit different to the english one. In the 16th hundred a captain appointed a Lokotenenten or depending on where in Germany you'd find yourself a Leutinger. Which had a similar function but didn't derive it's name from the french but the latin Locum Tenens. And with the German empire always having stronger ties with the Vatican, this latin etmology seems more appropriate than the french one. While the french lieutenant has similar routes, the fact that a Fähnlein (see below) had a Lokotenenten rather than a Lieu-tenant showes the roots more in the original latin than the french. The Leutinger then later became the known Leutnant by order of Friedrich III. Fun thing aside, a Captain was NOT the leader of a company (Kompanie) in the 16th hundred but a leader of a Fähnlein. That is why in German we have the Fähnrich, who was the sigl barer of a Fähnlein and often brought up to lead said Fähnlein. Kompanie is something which came later, not only in Germany but in europe in general and was not realy seen until mid 17th century.
Great video! In Canada it is "Left-tenant" but I have heard local news refer to provincial governors as "Loo-tenant General". It's kind of funny as we are bilingual and every interaction I've had with the military, they stress "Left-tenant".
Uh-oh, Lindybeige is going to be VEXED. We all love him & his enthusiasm, but it must be said admitting mistakes isn't his strong point.(A moment of silence for his infamous Bren gun video in which it was determined the Bren must be better than the Spandau because... the Allies won WWII.A logical bridge too far.) EDIT FOR THE HUMOR-IMPAIRED: Yes, I'm making a deliberate oversimplification. Lloyd made several comparisons between the guns, the merits of which are you are free to evaluate as you see fit. However, he also DID make a serious, sort-of-tie-breaking argument that gave the nod to the Bren "because Britain beat Germany in WWII and therefore the Bren must be better or they wouldn't have won" (paraphrasing from memory). Lloyd has a good sense of humor and at first I assumed he was joking, but watching through to the end, it became clear he was not. That's the one inexcusable breakdown in logic that deserves a (good-natured) spanking. Everyone makes mistakes and gets specific facts wrong. But failing to acknowledge nonsensical logic is a different beast.
Pål Deisz honestly in that case it does work. the American and Russian tanks were superior to the German tanks because they actually worked and were avaliable in massive numbers. what's the point in having the best thing ever for war, when it takes five years to build It?. Good design necessarily should include ease and cheapness of manufacture.
The two sides of my personality are now in violent conflict as a result of this video. As a philosophy graduate I must salute your honesty and your quest for the truth and what you say makes a lot of sense. As a retired Major from Tunbridge Wells I shall go and buy a copy of the Telegraph so I can rattle it aggressively as I rewatch this video tomorrow.
Turns out that around about the Tudor period, Lieutenant was often spelt liefetenant, or leeftenant, though also sometimes with a v, as in lievtenant or leevtenant. It was probably changed to lieutenant by the grammarians who insisted on changing english to french spellings in the 19th century - (as in color to colour). Naturally the native pronunciation remained the same. Alternatively, the form with a v became standard, later being substituted with a u to bring it into conformity with french patterns.
Hi Matt, you are correct the french pronunciation of Lieutenant is "Loo-ten-ant," however the British tradition of saying "Left-tenant" goes all the way back to 1805 with Vice Admiral Lord Nelson & the Battle of Trafalgar. On the morning of the battle, Nelson ordered one of his Captains to hoist the now famous pennant signal "England expects that every man will do their duty." The captain in question called out to the signal Officer "Lieutenant Pasco hoist the flags" with a crisp french pronounciation of the rank. Lord Nelson famously scolded the Captain & remarked "it's Left-tenant" from now on, this isn't the bloody French navy." After Lord Nelson death it became part of Royal Navy tradition & has been used ever since. Prior to 1805 both the Army & Royal Navy used the classic french pronunciation.
I'm not too sure about this, source please? Way to much alike so many other "famous truths" you find flitting about on the web... But with a proper source added at the very least one can make up ones' mind whether or not to believe said source.
I'm French and lieutenant is more close etymologically in Latin "locus tenens" literally to keep an area but the figurative meaning is also "which serves as" "qui tiens lieu de" in French, in fact "lieu" means area and also "which serves as" like a substitute, so maybe the confusion with "left"enant. And maybe the pronunciation was a bit difficult as well, you can pronounce lieutenant like this in French "LE + schwa + T +NAN" . Thank you for you work, you are amazing, keep going, regards from France.
u and v were the same letter in Latin and were used interchangeably even in the spelling of many vernacular languages in early modernity. This might be another reason. And I always had the hunch that especially "eu" could become "ev" and "ef" in analogy with Greek where "u" changed from a vowel in classical Greek to a consonant in modern (e.g. "thanks" = euxaristo" pronounced roughly efkharisto). Briefly, the "leftenant" could have arisen from the spelling, regardless of an actual french pronunciation and that the "folk etymology" of "left tenant" instead of "place holding/substitute/second in command" officer might have set in. Looking it up in wikipedia it seems that in older French the consonantal pronunciation of "u" in such combinations did exist and this might be the reason.
Matt, I think I remember reading (somewhere) that the British Navy pronounced the term as "loo-tenant" well into the 20th century, until the pronunciation became a national pride issue.
i can think of one other example: petrol vs. gas. Not that it matters but petrol is short for petroleum and gas is short for gasoline. Technically the stuff you put in your car is both gasoline and petroleum, but petroleum is a broader catagory for petroleum products, and usually petroleum refined into gasoline is no longer refered to as petroleum. Its kind of like looking at a glass of orange juice as calling it "fruit". It's not incorrect it just could be more specific.
In at least my American History classes, we were taught the practical French involvement in our revolution was minimal in most cases and that they were there more in spirit and as a threat to the British. In fact, it was seemingly taught with a little bit of the sentiment that they did not do as much as promised or expected. But we didn't really have a Navy at all, so there was that.
It sounds to me like it was with America in World War II swooping in at the last second for some key victories. To each their own to write their own histories according to their perspective. Human bias is a thing.
As an idea. U - W used to be written interchangeably a variation in the pronunciation w of can produce a sound similar to that of an f... I can see a fairly simple phonetic shift that would see a variant pronunciation of loo-tenant to Lewhu-tenant/lefhu-tenant(a subtle f sound) then being further anglicised to left-tenant. Need to look into this further but I think this is a plausible explanation.
Americans treat the origins of this republic with an almost religious level of reverence. We famously named our version of the Old English Fyrd or the Scottish Highland Fyne after the French National Guard out of respect for Lafayette. Of course we wouldn't botch something as simple as the pronunciation of lieu. That would be almost be an insult to Lafayette.
+Alistair Shaw really? Then why are you almost the last ones keeping the imperial system? If you hate the Imperial Bastards? Britain has more and more (thank the gods) started to use the metric system (You know, the logic based one) instead of it's own old imperial bs crap. But US keeps it and defends it's use rabidly... /rollseyes
I have seen it attributed to how, at one time, "U" and "V" being written the same leading lieutenant being write as lievtenant which became lieftanent.
Just as interesting would be to know why they used those terms. Because there were pre-existing ranks before that term came in. My guess is that the English took that term from the Dutch State Army in the late 16th and early 17th Century, then cementing it with the New Model Army. In Dutch the word became Luitenant (œy). In that model the Luitenant was indeed the second officer, because the company and not the battalion/regiment was the biggest administrative unit. The Dutch used the ranks of their fleet for the army units, just replacing a few words. Schipper (skipper or captain) became hopman and the vaandrig (ensign) was in charge of the colour party, but was often referred to as an adelborst, meaning young gentleman, and at sea denoting an officer in training (midshipman). The sergeant was what is now a sergeant-major and the korporaal what is now a sergeant.
The sun set on the British Empire and now it's the next morning. Waking up with a hangover, Britain finds itself in bed with Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson.
That makes very much sense, Matt. I would say that this just became a tradition, but the stuck-in-time-explanation is an interesting theory. I might add that in the Holy Roman Empire of the 18th century (or at least in the Habsburg part of it), the word was most of the time (as there was no clear and binding orthorgraphy at the time) spelled "Lieutenant", which then evolved into the modern German "Leutnant".
Hey Matt, your video just made me think of something. You talk a lot about primary source material (particularly as it relates to sword use), but I have never heard you talk about any sources relating to the American war of independence or as we would call it the revolutionary war. So I was wondering if there are any accounts like that, and if so, then would you make a video about it. Thanks.
its just the army having to be different. the Navy says loo-tenant. you want a completely messed up one. Flight left-tenant. shortened to flight looey. this all being said I suspect the change happened sometime after the war of independence because american english is pretty much equivalent to quebec french. IE retarded (what i mean is held back, restrained, aka the proper meaning) at the point of split from the original language. in other words america has kept, with their own evolutions (trunk and hood spring to mind) the english of the 18th whereas English (and for completeness french) have moved on.
correct me if i'm wrong, but i always thought lieutennant derives from "lieu" like "the place/plaza/square" etc., so he would be the one left in charge of the "lieu", the place.
I think it's more likely a syllable changed for ease of parlance. Loo-tenant shortened to leh-tenant based on certain British dialects, then to lef-tenant eventually. Sort of like the much lampooned Ah-mer-kuh from Ah-mer-ik-uh.
Speaking of wacky French holdovers, the scoring in tennis needs to change. This whole love-15-30-40-game non-sense is beyond dumb. It needs to change to 0-1-2-3-4. I mean, we score tie-breakers in that way (up to 7, but in increments of one), so why not just score all the games that way instead of this weird French way?
A junior always takes the subordinate position, (to the left) of a senior. I have absolutely no idea if this is even relevant to the British pronunciation, but it is a military fact. The lieutenant would be to the captain's left.
if that’s the case then yanks can call it lieutenant and at the end of the day however you wanna twist the logic it’s origin is French so they have the right to say it like the French lol
Also, the military rank Colonel is said KUR-nel, not COLL-on-ell, which threw me off when I was younger. There is no visible 'r' in the word, but ends up being pronounced with one. The wikipedia entry for colonel has some interesting history on the word, but it looks like the pronunciation has changed with the spelling remaining unchanged.
The British are terrible at pronouncing non-English words. Fillet and valet are French words pronounced with a soft "T" the correct American way. It's even worse for Spanish words like paella, the Brits prounce the "L" instead of "Y" which sounds ridiculous to Americans. Then there's the inability to pronunce Latin properly. The letter A is always pronunced "Ah" in Latin. So no Uranus does not rhyme with the rude body part.
If you want to ponounce it correctly, do not pronounce the 't', the 't' here is only decorative and/or an indication on how to pronounce the 'e' before. Pronounciation of said e depend on the region, usualy anything between 'é' and 'è'.
Just because a word in English has a French root it does not follow it will have a French pronunciation. English is its own language and not bound by other languages pronunciation rules.
Johny Ricco But then you get in to the problem of the US creating words for no reason. I mean burglarized, what are you talking about? A burgler burgles, the house was burgled.
Uranus is a greek god, not a roman one. And either way, as liamE69 said, english is distinct from french borrowing words doesnt necessitate similar pronunciation the french just as the french dont need to use english pronunciation when they borrow english words. Fillet, valet, gullet, bullet, skillet, billet, ballet. The rule isnt consistent and the country it comes from is largely irrelavent just like how octopuses is fine despite it coming from greek. I prefer the english pronunciation of fillet as it is is both a cut and the action of cutting. A crisp word like we pronounce it is more pleasing. Ballet and Valet are more high brow activities and so im happier to use the french pronunciation. An American fillet of fish sounds like you are introducing a new dance at the theatre as a warm up act to the the dying swan. On paella, if we dont make it the valencian way, i think its less insulting to pronounce it differently than to claim we are making their traditional dish wrong.
What about the way the British soldiers salute? With the palm sticking out? Always seen that in movies with the Brits wearing those shorts carrying a riding crop.
Well, if they have a convention for a certain word, even if it is a stupid convention, keep it. Because otherwise you confuse people. Not to mention that English speaking people mispronounce everything - like you call Skåne Scania.
Funny that you mention it. In my home country we spell it Pekin and pronounce it Pekin... But that is way we know it and we would be confused if try to change it. Also Chinese is a tonal language, so there is no way for westerners to spell it and pronounce it right anyway.
Obviously you can't do much to fight convention when it comes to pronunciation (though it's certainly been tried in the past), but it's always worth telling elitist Brits to stop getting uppity about people pronouncing things a more sensible way than we do.
The Americans do not use the French pronunciation of this word, nor of other French words. The city 'Detroit' is said as though it were English. English spelling is of the derivation, and does not reflect pronunciation. I prefer the British to speak English as British, not as foreigners. The Americans say something like 'Loo-tennant' whereas the French pronunciation is more like 'Lyeeu-tenno' ', therefore the Americans cannot argue that they are saying it the French way. The British also say 'Parris' for the capital of France and not 'La Parrhee'. The British cannot be wrong if they pronounce a word the way they pronounce a word.
Yup! Lieutenant, for us Italians, is 'Luogotenente', ('the one who keeps (tenente) the place (luogo))'. What we do it wrong was 'Fieldmarshall' (what we call 'Feldmaresciallo', where 'feld' is a nonexistent word in Italian - I guess it means 'fiend' in German, but not sure). TBH, I still wonder why so many of these things get translated so 'clumsily'. 'Laughtenant' would be a funny rank, though! (that would make a nice closure panel in Lindybeige's video style)
+scholagladiatoria On the spelling issue, it bears noting that any concept of consistent English spelling is a historically really rather recent innovation, and started occurring around the time that French was a prestige language of European culture and diplomacy, so that could well be the reason for the British spelling following the French.
Haha I am in the Canadian army and years ago during my basic I got jacked up for pronouncing it 'Loo' just from always watching American war films. Great to know that the instructor, and everyone else in the Canadian Forces, is actually wrong, though I'm now much too used to pronouncing it as 'Left' now haha
One possibility I can think of is that during the Middle Ages the word "lieutenant" may have been written with Latin spelling conventions, basically writing "V" instead of "U" so you would end up with "lievtenant". For English speakers with no basis in French pronunciation they may read it phonetically.
Maybe something similar happened to the tennis term "love", which denotes that you have zere points in the current game. I'm not sure if this is actually true, but I have always heard that it comes from the french word for egg, œuf.
An interesting talk. And I see Metatron has recently made a similar video in response. Gonna check that out now. And congrats on the silver play button. If it was shown in other, more recent videos, I missed it.
Very well reasoned, the quirks that are found in languages are always interesting. Our imaginatve brains, and ability to conform to strange ways of doing things is always a fun time.
Most enlightening. I always assumed "left-tennant" was a nautical convention, like gunwal, that caught on elsewhere. In any case, I rather like it. It's more like cultural color than a mispronunciation, and is lovely in that way. No need to appologize, y'all! -a Southerner, U.S.A.
In English, we have the word lieu (as in the phrase 'in lieu'). And it was in middle English, I believe, from the French. It means 'place' (so 'in lieu' means, in place of or instead of). So shouldn't people should have understood 'loo-tenant' as much as any other word coming from French - including the tenant bit? In the Australian Defence Force ... Air Force: Lef-tenant. Army: Lef-tenant. Navy: Loo-tenant. Go figure?
I am a french native speaker so when Matt suggested the possibility that the origin of the british "error" could be an old local form of french dialect writing lieuf or lef or something I was really sceptic. I am no expert but that kind of stuff interests me so I did a little research and to my astonishment Matt could be on to something! Turns out, tat, of course, there are no version of that word wtritten with the letter or sound "f" BUT, there are sources dating from the XI century (same as Normand conquest of 1066) that wrote "lieu" with an "s" at the end. No F, but an S. Thing is, in old forms of written french, the letter S tended to be written in an elongated form that actually do look like an F . Like, when you read old scripts like that as a complete neophite, you could mistake s for f. It's still a stretch to say that is is the real cause of british pronunciation because french speaking nonles ruled the military for centuries... someone would have said something, to be sure. But then again, wierd things happen with time: I am thinking the way the cliché "Ye olde shop" is often mispronounced with the modern sound of Y (like "yoyo") instead of Th, like we are supposed to say. So it is possible that, it comes from mistaking s for f in old documents... but then, the shift would have happened in the modern era, not with french aristocracy in charge of the military. www.littre.org/definition/lieu
I suspect, although I am not 100% sure, that another reason the Americans borrowed a lot of our military structure from the French, is because during the Revolution, the American Continental Army was set up under the training and advising of the French (I think?), but I cannot recall who it was exactly, and now I question whether I am remembering this accurately. And, as noted in this video, the French certainly provided a lot of assistance to America.
There's a more sound reason for why the British word is worng. Americans got it from French, and French got it from Italians, who derived the word from Latin. The Latin origin is "lŏcum tenĕns", literally "in place of a tenent". In Italian, in fact, it is "luogotenente", and "luogo" is equivalent to the French "lieu" -it means "place". "Left-tenent" is probably an Englishization of the word "lieutenent", by buiding up a meaning (left-in-charge) that somehow happens to make sense. It doesn't happen, for instance, in the word "cutlass". That's an Englishization of the French word "coutelas", which ultimately comes from Italian "coltellaccio", meaning a "nasty knife".
To be honest, I always just assumed Brits mispronounce French words as a way of sticking it to the French. :/
That's always a possibility, but then really they should have avoided using French words in the first place!
Lindybeige would agree.
Touché.
matt, than they wouldn't care! Currently you guys are making the americans and french people cringe! Isn't that marvelous?
Well it's only fair, as they make us cringe on so many other matters ;-)
Now we need a video about the pronunciation of Colonel.
Yes, please.
It's another French word. So, you know, the French. What can you say?
As a guy from Finland, where 99% of the time we pronounce words just as they're written, i'm very interested in finding out the reason saying "colonel" sounds like the word "kernel".
Finnish might be hard for foreigners to learn, but at least once they learn it, there's no big surprises with the pronunciation of any words they might encounter.
No, they're going to have a problem with how the word house (and every other similar word) can go from "talo" to "talossa", "taloissa", "taloissakin", "taloista" and so on...
Instead of saying something is IN the house, we say "taloSSA", instead of FROM the house, it's "taloSTA". This has been your Finnish-lesson for today...
hahaha the English might have.this one licked
@markotark
We should teach them all the words for dog ;)
koirakaan, koirankaan, koiraakaan, koirassakaan, koirastakaan, koiraankaan, koirallakaan, koiraltakaan, koirallekaan, koiranakaan, koiraksikaan, koirattakaan, koirineenkaan, koirinkaan, koirako, koiranko, koiraako, koirassako, koirastako, koiraanko, koirallako, koiraltako, koiralleko, koiranako, koiraksiko, koirattako, koirineenko, koirinko, koirasikaan, koiranikaan, koiransakaan, koirammekaan, koirannekaan, koiraanikaan, koiraasikaan, koiraansakaan, koiraammekaan, koiraannekaan, koirassanikaan, koirassasikaan, koirassansakaan, koirassammekaan, koirassannekaan, koirastanikaan, koirastasikaan, koirastansakaan, koirastammekaan, koirastannekaan, koirallanikaan, koirallasikaan, koirallansakaan, koirallammekaan, koirallannekaan, koirananikaan, koiranasikaan, koiranansakaan, koiranammekaan, koiranannekaan, koiraksenikaan, koiraksesikaan, koiraksensakaan, koiraksemmekaan, koiraksennekaan, koirattanikaan, koirattasikaan, koirattansakaan, koirattammekaan, koirattannekaan, koirinenikaan, koirinesikaan, koirinensakaan, koirinemmekaan, koirinennekaan, koirasiko, koiraniko, koiransako, koirammeko, koiranneko, koiraaniko, koiraasiko, koiraansako, koiraammeko, koiraanneko, koirassaniko, koirassasiko, koirassansako, koirassammeko, koirassanneko, koirastaniko, koirastasiko, koirastansako, koirastammeko, koirastanneko, koirallaniko, koirallasiko, koirallansako, koirallammeko, koirallanneko, koirananiko, koiranasiko, koiranansako, koiranammeko, koirananneko, koirakseniko, koiraksesiko, koiraksensako, koiraksemmeko, koiraksenneko, koirattaniko, koirattasiko, koirattansako, koirattammeko, koirattanneko, koirineniko, koirinesiko, koirinensako, koirinemmeko, koirinenneko, koirasikaanko, koiranikaanko, koiransakaanko, koirammekaanko, koirannekaanko, koiraanikaanko, koiraasikaanko, koiraansakaanko, koiraammekaanko, koiraannekaanko, koirassanikaanko, koirassasikaanko, koirassansakaanko, koirassammekaanko, koirassannekaanko, koirastanikaanko, koirastasikaanko, koirastansakaanko, koirastammekaanko, koirastannekaanko, koirallanikaanko, koirallasikaanko, koirallansakaanko, koirallammekaanko, koirallannekaanko, koirananikaanko, koiranasikaanko, koiranansakaanko, koiranammekaanko, koiranannekaanko, koiraksenikaanko, koiraksesikaanko, koiraksensakaanko, koiraksemmekaanko, koiraksennekaanko, koirattanikaanko, koirattasikaanko, koirattansakaanko, koirattammekaanko, koirattannekaanko, koirinenikaanko, koirinesikaanko, koirinensakaanko, koirinemmekaanko, koirinennekaanko, koirasikokaan, koiranikokaan, koiransakokaan, koirammekokaan, koirannekokaan, koiraanikokaan, koiraasikokaan, koiraansakokaan, koiraammekokaan, koiraannekokaan, koirassanikokaan, koirassasikokaan, koirassansakokaan, koirassammekokaan, koirassannekokaan, koirastanikokaan, koirastasikokaan, koirastansakokaan, koirastammekokaan, koirastannekokaan, koirallanikokaan, koirallasikokaan, koirallansakokaan, koirallammekokaan, koirallannekokaan, koirananikokaan, koiranasikokaan, koiranansakokaan, koiranammekokaan, koiranannekokaan, koiraksenikokaan, koiraksesikokaan, koiraksensakokaan, koiraksemmekokaan, koiraksennekokaan, koirattanikokaan, koirattasikokaan, koirattansakokaan, koirattammekokaan, koirattannekokaan, koirinenikokaan, koirinesikokaan, koirinensakokaan, koirinemmekokaan, koirinennekokaan.
A loo tenant is toilet renter.
then whats the meaning of colonel?
jonnyy40 he who brings chicken
In this case I'm going to blame the German language for it. The grade or rank in German is Leutnant, if we misread a u as a v because of poor handwriting we get Levtnant, add an extra vowel to make it easier to say and hey presto Left-tenant.
I hope the Armed forces can afford better billeting for an officer than a lavatory.
I would have thought that the left tenant, is the one who rents the apartment on the left.
Thank you for being honest. Many British people like to insist they're always correct in language.
Lieutenant, Lieu-tenant. Place-holder. Literally.
Not even the Brits say "in left of" or "time off in left".
Exactly, we even use the word lieu in English and we pronounce it as 'loo' as well, so both words are used-a tenant in lieu of another. It's just one of those funny etymological oddities that has never changed.
Yeah, my French isn't what it used to be, but gauche is left, and droit is right. So yeah, lieu is not left.
Ah, now i see. That makes sense then!
Hahaha, that literal translation's great. I can't believe I didn't think of it before.
But seriously, "lieu" in that word doesn't mean location, it means replacement. There's an expression in french, "au lieu de", which is used like "instead of". So lieutenant is something like "one who holds instead of -".
Lieu means "place", in French (and in archaic English) Lieutenant = place holder. Lieutenants hold the place of captains, lieutenant colonels hold the place of colonels, and lieutenant generals hold the place of generals (four-star General is just "general", at least here in the US Army)
Ok so I am french speaker and I don't understand a word of what you are saying :p
But it can be because I don't know the french of the time.
Or because it is not the good ethymology :
"Lieutenant", "Lieu" Tenant"
"Lieu" : "place". "Tenant" = "holder". The one who hold the place, not the one who is "left" tenant.
But I can be wrong, I just feel it more possible than "Lieu" meaning "Left". I never heard of that and it is my mothertong.
Grégory Fleury No, my dear romance speaking friend. "Lieu" means just "place" and it never meant "left", "right" or anything else. this goes the same for all other romance languages such as italian, spanish, romanian etc. Lieu-tenant is place-holder but it should not be translated as "left in charge" because it would imply the comander is no longer present so he left someone in charge with his comand - instead the lieutenant is the place holder of the comander for a speciffic task on the comand execution/activity (since the comander can't multiply himself). sorry for the spelling and i hope you're not more confused than before.
No this is the perfect answer I was looking for. I am not a linguist and though I love to understand languages I don't have the knowledge, I only have my own observations. Having a better understanding through your educated comment is a good thing. Thank you.
* * that works for sub-alterns but not for loo-tenant commanders or left-tenant kernels who were often left in charge of a boat or regiment. now however left-tenant colonels are the lead officers of regiments because the British army is tiny.
You're correct Grégory Fleury.
What I think it a misconception that originates from the word "Lieu" in English can be used synonymously with "Instead of" or "in place of".
e.g. "He gave us an IOU in lieu of cash", "The company issued additional shares to shareholders in lieu of a cash dividend. "With Tom gone, Mary as was in charge as of lieu".
OlaftheFlashy or time off in lieu. which i maintain is a stupid phrase. in lieu of what? work? thats what time off is.
I think you pronounced Lindybeige wrong. Everybody knows that he's pronounced "leftiebomble"!
It's short for "Sir Lindy-KeepAStiffUpperlip-Beige." Btw, 'beige' is of course *not* derived from the French word for the colour beige. Certainly *NOT.*
Of course not, since we all know the proper way to say the "beige" part of "Lindybiege" is actually koftou. Yah know, "Sir Lindy-KeepAStiffUpperlip-Koftou". There's no way you can confuse that with that dirty French word for brown.
More like sandalwood really.... But brown will do I suppose...
*sigh, the plebs. They will never learn*
left-tennent, because they are never right.
Ternvall ☠ canada does not.
Japan is also a left-driving country. Incidentally it's also an Island nation, like the UK. So they're crazies too anyway. Indonesia (lots of islands, lots of crazies) is also left-driving. No explanation for either Guyana or Surinam, both are neighbouring coastal countries on top of Brazil. And both are left-driving.
Can't spell lost without LT
@@AudieHolland ayyy you repping Guyana?
David Tennant
Lieutenant in Spanish is Lugar Teniente or just Teniente for short. It literally means place holder. The Lieutenant is left as tenant of the Captains authority....
And I typed too soon, as you then went over this in a way. Nice. Awesome video.
Following the same line of reasoning (getting back to the French roots of the word), should we pronounce "colonel" as "coll-onn-ell" rather than "kernel"?
The usual solution is to change the spelling to better reflect the pronunciation (because spoken languages tend to do whatever the hell they want). English spelling reform, yo!
Jacob Day or not. because geordies.
British English is famous for effing up pronunciations. Keeping "foreign" or old spelling but re-pronounciate them. Wednesday, Worcestershire Sauce, Colonel, Lieutenant, etc.
Otoh it's done a LOT in ALL English... English spelling visavi pronunciation correlation is... Sketchy at best...
Just look at what you name the letters in the alphabet contra how they are pronounced. The letter "e" is named after the sound of the letter "i", the sound "a" is very often spelled with a "u", as in "pug" or "gun" for instance... It's riddled with such things...
Colonel is definitely better and easier to read then having it pronounced kernel. Kernel just it just makes no sense.
There's a kernel of truth to that.
I actually spent several years wondering if "Leftenant" was simply a rank we didn't have in the US military or was supposed to be Lieutenant.
"Lieutenant" literally means "placeholder"
It's likely a Norman or earlier Scandinavian influence, as we often pronounce "eu" as "ev" or "ef" (Zeus is pronounced Zefs for example).
George Percy, second in command to Governor Thomas West de la Warr, spelled it "Leftenante" and "Lieftennantt" in his journal. This was written in the early 1600s in Virginia, but it leads me to believe part of the issue is lack of standardized spelling in English until about 200 years ago.
And the fact that as usual, Lloyd/Lindy is wrong.
Another hypothesis I've heard of says that because the word started being used back when the letters u and v were not yet fully differentiated, and sometimes used in the opposite way we use them today, some people misread lieutenant as lievtenant, and the misreading caught on.
Hi Matt,
I have two points for you to consider about this word. I actually believe they would contradict each other, but I am not an expert enough to say which one is true...
Firstly, one has to remember that the word is not only spelled in France and Britain like this, here in Germany, the equivalent rank is spelled "Leutnant" - which is easily achievable by simply dropping a few letters. As far as I know, it was introduced during the napoleonic era, frist in the french spelling, before it evolved to its current form.
My second point is about the early medieval spelling. If I remember correctly, there was only one letter representing both "u" and "v", before it separated into the modern characters. Could it be that the sound of the word began to differ independently from the spelling, as the Britsh began pronouncing it with an "f" for the "v" and the French turned towards the "u"?
Anyway, great video!
another Matt
You're right, at the time of the Conquest (and for more than a century after), the vast majority of documents would have been written in the Carolingian script or Uncial and its derivatives, all of which lack a u/v distinction. U/v distinction came about with the early Gothic scripts starting around 1200, but many documents would have still been written in the earlier scripts for quite a long time after.
The U/V thing seems like it would make a lot of sense to me, "lievtenant" could easily blur into "lieftenant," and over centuries a common mispronunciation from 1100 ended up sticking.
Wait, are you saying that Germans DROPPED few letters?
Yeah, as far as I know, the original version used within the german dialects was "Lieutenant", just like everyone else would spell it. But during the 19th century sometime, it changed to its current version "Leutnant". So the german spelling dropped the "i" and the second "e".
As for the reason for this change, I could only speculate, it may well be the strong animosity between France and Germany during the latter half of the 19th century, but one can hardly deny that the two words are too close to be not closely related.
*fireman23* Nah, the Germans kept using the same word but they shortened it because that was more convenient for them. If they were taking animosity between both countries into consideration, they would have changed it for a German word. Like "Ersatzführer" or something. German is not my native language obviously, but for those non Germans who think 'Führer' is tainted, a 'Zugführer' in German can mean platoon leader or traindriver.
Of course you could be right that it was simply for convenience, frankly I don't know.It might be that the new spelling was just easier to pronounce for them. But thinking about events like the 1870 war, or the general animosity that continued until after ww2, I think it is also a possibility. Perhaps the real reason will never be known for certain.
On the other hand, you're right, the nazis later used entirely different ranks for their organizations like the SS, most likely to avoid words from other languages, particularly french: e.g. Major became Sturmbannführer...
I'm responding to this today :D
"The British are wrong." Well no big surprise to every non-brit out there ;)
Just kidding, nice to see that there are still people out there who admit their mistakes and put things right :-)
There you go Americans, now apologise for what you did to the word "aluminium".
And missile.
Blake Stone you misspelled aluminum there XD
And "Cavalry" and "Nuclear" too.
wait we say missile differently ?
darkdragonsoul99 Americans often seem to drop the 'i' while the British pronounce it the second syllable like the word 'isle'
I have seen 17th century texts which write it as Leftenant. There were a few which were Lieftenant too.
I think the original French spelling came into the English language a bit later, sometime between the late 17th and mid 18th century as spellings became more standardised and because English was held in low regard compared to Romance languages.
French pronunciation is also definetly more Lieu (lee-uh) than loo. I think some parts of France might say Loo, but not the majority.
"The Norman French phrase 'lieutenant' may have predated the Latin rendering 'locum tenens'. The earliest examples in OED are all from Scotland, and it seems even then that the "Lefftenant" pronunciation was being used (Barbour's "Bruce" has "luftenand" in the mid 14th century). Moreoever an Old French rending of lieu was "luef". The British pronunciation was still used in the USA in 1793 but had almost died out except in military circles by 1893. One could explain this the influence of non-British immigrants applying standard French pronunciation to a word with apparently obvious French origins."
Ross Turner, St Monans Fife
Then what the heck is wrong with the word "colonel"?
Everything.
It came into French from Italian, but the French mispronounced it, and by the time the French corrected their speak, it already took hold in England.
it's "leftenant" in Canada, too, unless you're speaking French, then it's "lootenant", but more like "luetnah"
No one says leftenant in Canada
@@snarbolax6962 Plenty of people in the CF do and my friend who was in the Cadets still does. Also says "Shedjewel".
in german we did it worse.
we germanised the word to "leutnant" which makes no sense any more.
but other than that, historically both terms were used, and both have the same meaning.
when in the germanic area during the 16th century standing armies were evolving (prior to that feudal levies had no such rigid structure), a captain (hauptmann) was the leader of a company.
the lieutenant was not a commander of his own, but assisted the captain, mainly in commanding the company, when the captain was absent.
so lieutenant is the guy who is the tenant of the position in lieu of the captain.
a leftenant is the tenant, when the captain has left.
both make perfect sense.
A Leutnant still is not the comander of his own.
A Leutnant in general terms is the leader of the 1st platton of a company and beeing 2iC.
However german etymology is a bit different to the english one. In the 16th hundred a captain appointed a Lokotenenten or depending on where in Germany you'd find yourself a Leutinger. Which had a similar function but didn't derive it's name from the french but the latin Locum Tenens. And with the German empire always having stronger ties with the Vatican, this latin etmology seems more appropriate than the french one.
While the french lieutenant has similar routes, the fact that a Fähnlein (see below) had a Lokotenenten rather than a Lieu-tenant showes the roots more in the original latin than the french. The Leutinger then later became the known Leutnant by order of Friedrich III.
Fun thing aside, a Captain was NOT the leader of a company (Kompanie) in the 16th hundred but a leader of a Fähnlein.
That is why in German we have the Fähnrich, who was the sigl barer of a Fähnlein and often brought up to lead said Fähnlein.
Kompanie is something which came later, not only in Germany but in europe in general and was not realy seen until mid 17th century.
Great video! In Canada it is "Left-tenant" but I have heard local news refer to provincial governors as "Loo-tenant General". It's kind of funny as we are bilingual and every interaction I've had with the military, they stress "Left-tenant".
Uh-oh, Lindybeige is going to be VEXED. We all love him & his enthusiasm, but it must be said admitting mistakes isn't his strong point.(A moment of silence for his infamous Bren gun video in which it was determined the Bren must be better than the Spandau because... the Allies won WWII.A logical bridge too far.)
EDIT FOR THE HUMOR-IMPAIRED: Yes, I'm making a deliberate oversimplification. Lloyd made several comparisons between the guns, the merits of which are you are free to evaluate as you see fit. However, he also DID make a serious, sort-of-tie-breaking argument that gave the nod to the Bren "because Britain beat Germany in WWII and therefore the Bren must be better or they wouldn't have won" (paraphrasing from memory). Lloyd has a good sense of humor and at first I assumed he was joking, but watching through to the end, it became clear he was not. That's the one inexcusable breakdown in logic that deserves a (good-natured) spanking.
Everyone makes mistakes and gets specific facts wrong. But failing to acknowledge nonsensical logic is a different beast.
Sorry, I gotta agree with Lindy on that one.
Good point.
Let's try the same logic on the different tanks of the time...
The Horror.
and he is also very biased toward briton and very biased against france/french
Charles Dexter Ward thats a tad bit of a simplification of his logic.
Pål Deisz honestly in that case it does work. the American and Russian tanks were superior to the German tanks because they actually worked and were avaliable in massive numbers.
what's the point in having the best thing ever for war, when it takes five years to build It?.
Good design necessarily should include ease and cheapness of manufacture.
The two sides of my personality are now in violent conflict as a result of this video. As a philosophy graduate I must salute your honesty and your quest for the truth and what you say makes a lot of sense. As a retired Major from Tunbridge Wells I shall go and buy a copy of the Telegraph so I can rattle it aggressively as I rewatch this video tomorrow.
"So some months ago i met up with Lindybeige"
My condolences.
I was actually thinking about asking you about just this topic over the past few weeks. Thank you, Mr. Easton. That was quite interesting.
The British are never wrong by definition. we are just waiting for the rest of the world to catch up
Exactly
Turns out that around about the Tudor period, Lieutenant was often spelt liefetenant, or leeftenant, though also sometimes with a v, as in lievtenant or leevtenant. It was probably changed to lieutenant by the grammarians who insisted on changing english to french spellings in the 19th century - (as in color to colour). Naturally the native pronunciation remained the same. Alternatively, the form with a v became standard, later being substituted with a u to bring it into conformity with french patterns.
"The British are wrong"
Unsubscribe!
Brexiteer spotted XD
grimmriffer Britbong
Man the Bren guns!
Thanks, Matt! I spent 7 years in the UK as a boy, and even then "lef-tenant" didn't make sense.
Weird fact: one of the oldest English dialects, among closest to Elizabethan English, is found (or was found) on Kent Island in the Chesepeake Bay.
Johannes Liechtenauer he said one of the oldest, meaning its close, not to say that yours isnt
Hi Matt, you are correct the french pronunciation of Lieutenant is "Loo-ten-ant," however the British tradition of saying "Left-tenant" goes all the way back to 1805 with Vice Admiral Lord Nelson & the Battle of Trafalgar. On the morning of the battle, Nelson ordered one of his Captains to hoist the now famous pennant signal "England expects that every man will do their duty." The captain in question called out to the signal Officer "Lieutenant Pasco hoist the flags" with a crisp french pronounciation of the rank. Lord Nelson famously scolded the Captain & remarked "it's Left-tenant" from now on, this isn't the bloody French navy." After Lord Nelson death it became part of Royal Navy tradition & has been used ever since. Prior to 1805 both the Army & Royal Navy used the classic french pronunciation.
Very interesting, thanks!
I'm not too sure about this, source please? Way to much alike so many other "famous truths" you find flitting about on the web...
But with a proper source added at the very least one can make up ones' mind whether or not to believe said source.
Lie You Ten Ant? I smell a response video coming, but who'll be first? Metatron or Lindybeige?
Grzegorz Kalinski laugh if they did it together
Wildcard: It's gonna be Snapjelly
I'm French and lieutenant is more close etymologically in Latin "locus tenens" literally to keep an area but the figurative meaning is also "which serves as" "qui tiens lieu de" in French, in fact "lieu" means area and also "which serves as" like a substitute, so maybe the confusion with "left"enant. And maybe the pronunciation was a bit difficult as well, you can pronounce lieutenant like this in French "LE + schwa + T +NAN" . Thank you for you work, you are amazing, keep going, regards from France.
"in lieu of higher command this officer is tennant". lieu-tennant
One is not really here and the other isn't right. So you're both wrong...
u and v were the same letter in Latin and were used interchangeably even in the spelling of many vernacular languages in early modernity. This might be another reason.
And I always had the hunch that especially "eu" could become "ev" and "ef" in analogy with Greek where "u" changed from a vowel in classical Greek to a consonant in modern (e.g. "thanks" = euxaristo" pronounced roughly efkharisto). Briefly, the "leftenant" could have arisen from the spelling, regardless of an actual french pronunciation and that the "folk etymology" of "left tenant" instead of "place holding/substitute/second in command" officer might have set in. Looking it up in wikipedia it seems that in older French the consonantal pronunciation of "u" in such combinations did exist and this might be the reason.
Matt, I think I remember reading (somewhere) that the British Navy pronounced the term as "loo-tenant" well into the 20th century, until the pronunciation became a national pride issue.
i can think of one other example: petrol vs. gas. Not that it matters but petrol is short for petroleum and gas is short for gasoline. Technically the stuff you put in your car is both gasoline and petroleum, but petroleum is a broader catagory for petroleum products, and usually petroleum refined into gasoline is no longer refered to as petroleum. Its kind of like looking at a glass of orange juice as calling it "fruit". It's not incorrect it just could be more specific.
Wow! That admission had to hurt. What will Nigel Farage do when he hears what Matt said?
I'm waiting for him.
with saber at the ready?
Jim Wallstrum Farage kind of sounds Frenchie anyway. What is the origin of that name?
How is Nigel Farage relevant?
ark: English supremacist
Where do I complain to the BBC? I've been waiting for that episode forever!
Pronouncing lieutenant as left tenant always confused me a bit. I always wondered if people meant the same thing that I did.
In at least my American History classes, we were taught the practical French involvement in our revolution was minimal in most cases and that they were there more in spirit and as a threat to the British. In fact, it was seemingly taught with a little bit of the sentiment that they did not do as much as promised or expected. But we didn't really have a Navy at all, so there was that.
It sounds to me like it was with America in World War II swooping in at the last second for some key victories. To each their own to write their own histories according to their perspective. Human bias is a thing.
As Russian I pronounce it as lay-tenant even in English.
Harrad Rush cuz Russian military structure was copied from France :)
As an idea. U - W used to be written interchangeably a variation in the pronunciation w of can produce a sound similar to that of an f...
I can see a fairly simple phonetic shift that would see a variant pronunciation of loo-tenant to Lewhu-tenant/lefhu-tenant(a subtle f sound) then being further anglicised to left-tenant.
Need to look into this further but I think this is a plausible explanation.
Americans treat the origins of this republic with an almost religious level of reverence. We famously named our version of the Old English Fyrd or the Scottish Highland Fyne after the French National Guard out of respect for Lafayette. Of course we wouldn't botch something as simple as the pronunciation of lieu. That would be almost be an insult to Lafayette.
Mike Mac honestly I think that's just a case of sticking it to those impieralist bastards across the way.
Is Lafayette the guy you guys generally call "La Feet"?
+Alistair Shaw really? Then why are you almost the last ones keeping the imperial system? If you hate the Imperial Bastards? Britain has more and more (thank the gods) started to use the metric system (You know, the logic based one) instead of it's own old imperial bs crap. But US keeps it and defends it's use rabidly... /rollseyes
I have seen it attributed to how, at one time, "U" and "V" being written the same leading lieutenant being write as lievtenant which became lieftanent.
Kudos to you Matt, fuck tribalism, Go Truth!
Just as interesting would be to know why they used those terms. Because there were pre-existing ranks before that term came in.
My guess is that the English took that term from the Dutch State Army in the late 16th and early 17th Century, then cementing it with the New Model Army. In Dutch the word became Luitenant (œy).
In that model the Luitenant was indeed the second officer, because the company and not the battalion/regiment was the biggest administrative unit.
The Dutch used the ranks of their fleet for the army units, just replacing a few words. Schipper (skipper or captain) became hopman and the vaandrig (ensign) was in charge of the colour party, but was often referred to as an adelborst, meaning young gentleman, and at sea denoting an officer in training (midshipman). The sergeant was what is now a sergeant-major and the korporaal what is now a sergeant.
The sun set on the British Empire and now it's the next morning. Waking up with a hangover, Britain finds itself in bed with Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson.
lol
That makes very much sense, Matt. I would say that this just became a tradition, but the stuck-in-time-explanation is an interesting theory. I might add that in the Holy Roman Empire of the 18th century (or at least in the Habsburg part of it), the word was most of the time (as there was no clear and binding orthorgraphy at the time) spelled "Lieutenant", which then evolved into the modern German "Leutnant".
2:46 When I hear an American mocking French military history, I remind him, "if it weren't for the French, you'd all be speaking English."
Hey Matt, your video just made me think of something. You talk a lot about primary source material (particularly as it relates to sword use), but I have never heard you talk about any sources relating to the American war of independence or as we would call it the revolutionary war. So I was wondering if there are any accounts like that, and if so, then would you make a video about it. Thanks.
its just the army having to be different. the Navy says loo-tenant.
you want a completely messed up one. Flight left-tenant. shortened to flight looey.
this all being said I suspect the change happened sometime after the war of independence because american english is pretty much equivalent to quebec french. IE retarded (what i mean is held back, restrained, aka the proper meaning) at the point of split from the original language. in other words america has kept, with their own evolutions (trunk and hood spring to mind) the english of the 18th whereas English (and for completeness french) have moved on.
I was waiting all video to see if he'd bring up that the navy say "loo-tenant". Well mentioned, sir!
correct me if i'm wrong, but i always thought lieutennant derives from "lieu" like "the place/plaza/square" etc., so he would be the one left in charge of the "lieu", the place.
That always confused the hell outta me; interesting to know.
In French it's lieutenant, litterally: Lieu: place/area, Tenant: to hold (holding)
The modern French pronunciation is more like "Liøtnan"
I think it's more likely a syllable changed for ease of parlance. Loo-tenant shortened to leh-tenant based on certain British dialects, then to lef-tenant eventually. Sort of like the much lampooned Ah-mer-kuh from Ah-mer-ik-uh.
Australians also say "left-tenant"
IAmNotSpartacus in the navy they say leu ten
in australia army lieutenants are called "left-tenants" and navy lieutenants are called "leu-tenants"
Probably has something to do with the "oo" sound provoking drop bear attacks.
In my experience, it's a mix. As much as a lot of us are loathe to speak like Americans, their cultural influence is pretty pervasive.
I'm pretty sure you ARE, in fact, Spartacus
''Lieutenant'' in french is from ''qui tient lieu'' in the sens of representative, so pretty much the basic meaning of someone with a commission.
That is English for you, were the spelling has no refection on pronunciation of a word.
I always wondered why India says leftenant vs lieutenant (US version ). This explains it . Thank you for posting
Speaking of wacky French holdovers, the scoring in tennis needs to change. This whole love-15-30-40-game non-sense is beyond dumb. It needs to change to 0-1-2-3-4. I mean, we score tie-breakers in that way (up to 7, but in increments of one), so why not just score all the games that way instead of this weird French way?
Apparently the french used to use clocks to score. So 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes. #ancienttechnology
A junior always takes the subordinate position, (to the left) of a senior. I have absolutely no idea if this is even relevant to the British pronunciation, but it is a military fact. The lieutenant would be to the captain's left.
I just assume that it was deliberately pronounced differently to avoid confusion on the countless battlefields where the British defeated the French.
Just for your info, lieu means in french "place". The french "lieutenant" literally translates to "place-holder", as does the italian "luogotenente".
Brits who pronounce words like yanks should lose their rights as British subjects
French loan words in English are NOT French words, they are English words and subject to conventions of English pronunciation
It’s not pronounced like “yanks” it’s pronounced like French because it’s a French word lol
@@starofdabloc see comment above
if that’s the case then yanks can call it lieutenant and at the end of the day however you wanna twist the logic it’s origin is French so they have the right to say it like the French lol
Also, the military rank Colonel is said KUR-nel, not COLL-on-ell, which threw me off when I was younger. There is no visible 'r' in the word, but ends up being pronounced with one. The wikipedia entry for colonel has some interesting history on the word, but it looks like the pronunciation has changed with the spelling remaining unchanged.
The British are terrible at pronouncing non-English words. Fillet and valet are French words pronounced with a soft "T" the correct American way. It's even worse for Spanish words like paella, the Brits prounce the "L" instead of "Y" which sounds ridiculous to Americans. Then there's the inability to pronunce Latin properly. The letter A is always pronunced "Ah" in Latin. So no Uranus does not rhyme with the rude body part.
If you want to ponounce it correctly, do not pronounce the 't', the 't' here is only decorative and/or an indication on how to pronounce the 'e' before. Pronounciation of said e depend on the region, usualy anything between 'é' and 'è'.
Just because a word in English has a French root it does not follow it will have a French pronunciation. English is its own language and not bound by other languages pronunciation rules.
Johny Ricco But then you get in to the problem of the US creating words for no reason. I mean burglarized, what are you talking about? A burgler burgles, the house was burgled.
Uranus is a greek god, not a roman one. And either way, as liamE69 said, english is distinct from french borrowing words doesnt necessitate similar pronunciation the french just as the french dont need to use english pronunciation when they borrow english words. Fillet, valet, gullet, bullet, skillet, billet, ballet. The rule isnt consistent and the country it comes from is largely irrelavent just like how octopuses is fine despite it coming from greek.
I prefer the english pronunciation of fillet as it is is both a cut and the action of cutting. A crisp word like we pronounce it is more pleasing. Ballet and Valet are more high brow activities and so im happier to use the french pronunciation. An American fillet of fish sounds like you are introducing a new dance at the theatre as a warm up act to the the dying swan.
On paella, if we dont make it the valencian way, i think its less insulting to pronounce it differently than to claim we are making their traditional dish wrong.
"The word is an English one and is correctly pronounced "Vall - ett", although mispronunciation as "Val-ay" is common."
What about the way the British soldiers salute? With the palm sticking out? Always seen that in movies with the Brits wearing those shorts carrying a riding crop.
Well, if they have a convention for a certain word, even if it is a stupid convention, keep it. Because otherwise you confuse people.
Not to mention that English speaking people mispronounce everything - like you call Skåne Scania.
CharlesOffdensen you on about the trucks?
Reminder that English people heard the word "Beijing" and figured it made sense to spell it "Peking".
Funny that you mention it. In my home country we spell it Pekin and pronounce it Pekin... But that is way we know it and we would be confused if try to change it. Also Chinese is a tonal language, so there is no way for westerners to spell it and pronounce it right anyway.
HellbirdIV i mean Chinese written language doesnt really give pronunciations so you know.
Obviously you can't do much to fight convention when it comes to pronunciation (though it's certainly been tried in the past), but it's always worth telling elitist Brits to stop getting uppity about people pronouncing things a more sensible way than we do.
In this moment thousands of biscuits were crumbled and teacups were shattered.
I still think Left-tenant sounds better
The Americans do not use the French pronunciation of this word, nor of other French words. The city 'Detroit' is said as though it were English. English spelling is of the derivation, and does not reflect pronunciation. I prefer the British to speak English as British, not as foreigners. The Americans say something like 'Loo-tennant' whereas the French pronunciation is more like 'Lyeeu-tenno' ', therefore the Americans cannot argue that they are saying it the French way. The British also say 'Parris' for the capital of France and not 'La Parrhee'. The British cannot be wrong if they pronounce a word the way they pronounce a word.
Skip to 7:50 for TL;DR
wow
Can you just give me the jist of your comment? Because TL;DR
Military
American: Mil-it-tary
UK: Mil-it-tree
Bro, do you even elevator?
@@EnclaveTrooper1 I lift :)
LEUTNANT! XD
Yup! Lieutenant, for us Italians, is 'Luogotenente', ('the one who keeps (tenente) the place (luogo))'. What we do it wrong was 'Fieldmarshall' (what we call 'Feldmaresciallo', where 'feld' is a nonexistent word in Italian - I guess it means 'fiend' in German, but not sure).
TBH, I still wonder why so many of these things get translated so 'clumsily'.
'Laughtenant' would be a funny rank, though! (that would make a nice closure panel in
Lindybeige's video style)
Feld means field or in this case battlefield. Considering that there is no other kind of marshall the 'feld' is pretty stupid anyways.
Heresy!!!!! ;-)
+scholagladiatoria On the spelling issue, it bears noting that any concept of consistent English spelling is a historically really rather recent innovation, and started occurring around the time that French was a prestige language of European culture and diplomacy, so that could well be the reason for the British spelling following the French.
TRAITOR
Also a French word.
scholagladiatoria yup derived from Traitre
Wow, Matt said something that actually validates my American accent. Now I can feel a little less stupid when I talk. :P
Haha I am in the Canadian army and years ago during my basic I got jacked up for pronouncing it 'Loo' just from always watching American war films. Great to know that the instructor, and everyone else in the Canadian Forces, is actually wrong, though I'm now much too used to pronouncing it as 'Left' now haha
One possibility I can think of is that during the Middle Ages the word "lieutenant" may have been written with Latin spelling conventions, basically writing "V" instead of "U" so you would end up with "lievtenant". For English speakers with no basis in French pronunciation they may read it phonetically.
iirc some 17th (or late 16th) century documents spell it 'leuetenaunt', so perhaps it came to be pronounced lev-tenant, which later became leff-tenant
Maybe something similar happened to the tennis term "love", which denotes that you have zere points in the current game.
I'm not sure if this is actually true, but I have always heard that it comes from the french word for egg, œuf.
An interesting talk. And I see Metatron has recently made a similar video in response. Gonna check that out now. And congrats on the silver play button. If it was shown in other, more recent videos, I missed it.
I first noticed this in audiobooks but there was no "f" or "ph" in the printed versions.
british people: snail eating frogs.
also british people: j'aime le langue francais.
Very well reasoned, the quirks that are found in languages are always interesting. Our imaginatve brains, and ability to conform to strange ways of doing things is always a fun time.
Most enlightening. I always assumed "left-tennant" was a nautical convention, like gunwal, that caught on elsewhere. In any case, I rather like it. It's more like cultural color than a mispronunciation, and is lovely in that way. No need to appologize, y'all!
-a Southerner, U.S.A.
In English, we have the word lieu (as in the phrase 'in lieu'). And it was in middle English, I believe, from the French. It means 'place' (so 'in lieu' means, in place of or instead of). So shouldn't people should have understood 'loo-tenant' as much as any other word coming from French - including the tenant bit?
In the Australian Defence Force ... Air Force: Lef-tenant. Army: Lef-tenant. Navy: Loo-tenant. Go figure?
I am a french native speaker so when Matt suggested the possibility that the origin of the british "error" could be an old local form of french dialect writing lieuf or lef or something I was really sceptic. I am no expert but that kind of stuff interests me so I did a little research and to my astonishment Matt could be on to something!
Turns out, tat, of course, there are no version of that word wtritten with the letter or sound "f" BUT, there are sources dating from the XI century (same as Normand conquest of 1066) that wrote "lieu" with an "s" at the end. No F, but an S.
Thing is, in old forms of written french, the letter S tended to be written in an elongated form that actually do look like an F . Like, when you read old scripts like that as a complete neophite, you could mistake s for f.
It's still a stretch to say that is is the real cause of british pronunciation because french speaking nonles ruled the military for centuries... someone would have said something, to be sure.
But then again, wierd things happen with time: I am thinking the way the cliché "Ye olde shop" is often mispronounced with the modern sound of Y (like "yoyo") instead of Th, like we are supposed to say.
So it is possible that, it comes from mistaking s for f in old documents... but then, the shift would have happened in the modern era, not with french aristocracy in charge of the military.
www.littre.org/definition/lieu
I suspect, although I am not 100% sure, that another reason the Americans borrowed a lot of our military structure from the French, is because during the Revolution, the American Continental Army was set up under the training and advising of the French (I think?), but I cannot recall who it was exactly, and now I question whether I am remembering this accurately. And, as noted in this video, the French certainly provided a lot of assistance to America.
Thank you so much for clarifying that! Now, could you please clarify the whole Colonel/Kernal debate? Is it much the same issue?
There's a more sound reason for why the British word is worng.
Americans got it from French, and French got it from Italians, who derived the word from Latin.
The Latin origin is "lŏcum tenĕns", literally "in place of a tenent".
In Italian, in fact, it is "luogotenente", and "luogo" is equivalent to the French "lieu" -it means "place".
"Left-tenent" is probably an Englishization of the word "lieutenent", by buiding up a meaning (left-in-charge) that somehow happens to make sense.
It doesn't happen, for instance, in the word "cutlass". That's an Englishization of the French word "coutelas", which ultimately comes from Italian "coltellaccio", meaning a "nasty knife".