"Leftenant or Lootenant?" Topic

I'm building some small AWI forces for Sharp Practice and want to name my leaders. As far as I can tell, the shift from British English to American English was, and still is, a gradual process. At the time of the Revolution, would the rebellious colonials have called their junior officers "Leftenant" as in the standard British pronunciation, or would they already have switched to Lootenant as modern US pronunciation would have it?

That's wierd. I've always said Lootenant but then I've never been in the army.

Many American usages are actually 18th century English, as is their spelling of words like 'honor' and 'colour'. It is therefore possible that the modern English pronunciation of lieutenant came into use after the Revolution and that the word would have been pronounced in the American way by both sides at the time.

Alternatively, if 'leftenant' was already the established English pronunciation before the Revolution, both sides would have used that, but contact with the French troops in the AWI and subsequent immigration of non English speakers to the USA who would pronounce words as spelt may have caused the adoption of the modern American pronunciation.

Agree with Arthur1815 – likely the American current common usage came after the Revolution

I have read that American French and English basically was a different evolution based on isolation of the dialect that was spoken at the time it came over. I have not read it from an authoritative source, however. ???

Hmm. I can only say I've seen a decent number of period letters and diaries with strongly phonetic spelling, and never seen it spelled "leftenant." Has anyone had a different experience?

Rusty, the general rule I've read from the linguistics people is that the dialect spoken in colonies tends to resemble the dialect in the imperial capital--a sort of evening out of provincial accents. That was probably most true in mixed and commercial places like New York and Philadelphia. But if you get enough people from the same province, and isolate them a bit, different rules apply. New England pronunciation and vocabulary are very strongly reflective of 17th Century East Anglia, as is the architecture, and the tidewater south shows the kinship with England's "Wessex." Immigrants to those areas from elsewhere assimilated. See David Hackett Fisher's Albion's Seed.

But we have both made different changes to the common English of 1776. Note that Captain Kirk is still sounding general quarters. When did the Royal Navy change that to battle stations? On the other hand, some of Webster's simplified American spelling like armor and honor has become standard (American) English.

But we have at least been spared the Académie Francais, still trying to maintain 17th Century French without any nasty foreign words, of the committee which meets every few years to set the rules for German.

This is English, and we can verb anything we want to.

Robert. I'm not suggesting that the spelling would be leftenant, in British English the rank has always been written as Lieutenant. However, "leftenant" is how it is properly pronounced.

The Royal Navy calls 'Action Stations' rather than 'Battle Stations' when about to engage the enemy, I believe.

I understand that, BobGrognard--which was why I was talking about letters and diaries kept by people with very poor spelling skills. A man who thinks his immediate superior is a sarjent or sargint would presumably think he had to salute leftenants--if that were how he'd heard it pronounced. It's the sort of thing linguists use as clues to pre-Edison pronunciation. Except that I've never run into that particular spelling error, which makes me wonder whether anyone used the modern British pronunciation in 1776. (Anyone who HAS run into it--or into poetry or puns which would require the modern British pronunciation to make sense, please feel free to join in.)

Bob, until you've worked with 18th Century documents from plain country schools, you have no idea how rare and recent standardized spelling is. And ranks are better than names.

I sit corrected, 4DJones. Does anyone know the actual sequence? I have one source I mistrust saying "battle stations" was the original, with the USN zigging to "general quarters" and the RN zagging to "action stations" but nothing with sources or dates.

Which would fit in with "clear for action" that would be put all the crap away so there's room to work the guns.

Searching around the web, it seems that lef-tenant was the English pronunciation well before the AWI. It doesn't seem certain but the English pronunciation is possibly due to an archiac French spelling of leuf-tenant or – also possibly – because 'v' was sometimes used for 'u' – i.e., liev-tenant and 'v' sometimes has a 'f' sound. To make matters more confusing the Royal Navy pronunciation is le-teneant (i.e. not lef-tenant or loo-tenant') – or it used to be that way in the RN. I don't know if that's still the case. American loo-tenant seems to be post-AWI.

Or so the Germans would have us believe.

I suspect that in some American units, leutnant would be the usual pronunciation.

Unless you have audio recordings of how the people spoke, how would you know? On paper identify your characters as "lieutenant" but just refer to him as "subaltern Jones"

Wikipedia
"The word lieutenant derives from French; the lieu meaning "place" as in a position (cf. in lieu of); and tenant meaning "holding" as in "holding a position"; thus a "lieutenant" is a placeholder for a superior, during their absence (compare the Latin locum tenens)."

"The Continental Army carried over the rank structure from the British Army including the subaltern ranks of lieutenant, cornet, ensign and subaltern. Continental Army subalterns ranks were supposed to wear green colored cockades in their hats.[7] State militias in the American Revolutionary War period had ensign and sometimes subaltern ranks, with the subaltern rank below the ensign rank where they coexisted.[8]"

"Unless you have audio recordings of how the people spoke, how would you know?"

Bobgnar, that's precisely why people working the history of languages look for writing done phonetically. The whole "well, we SPELL it this way, but we SAY it this entirely different way" bit is a phenomenon of the educated and even over-educated classes. Unfortunately, we don't hear much of the minimally literate on the British side of the AWI. Sergeant Lamb gets quoted to death because there aren't many enlisted memoirs to choose from. (There is an abundance for the Peninsular War, and we can all sit around and argue whether this is the result of Methodist Sunday schools or the greater interest in writing about being on the winning side.)

But on the American side of the AWI, matters are quite different. There are plenty of enlisted with a few years in a town school or taught their letters by an overworked family member. They know what letter goes with what sound, but haven't the remotest notion that Toliver is supposed to be spelled Taliaferro, or that some people spell nife with a "k." Get a collection which hasn't had spelling corrected for the benefit of the modern reader, and you'll learn quite a bit about how the people spoke prior to the invention of the phonograph.

Poems, songs and letters are a pretty standard way of figuring out how old languages sounded, particularly puns, or anything which rhymes as they highlight any major differences to modern pronunciations.

I know I am going somewhat off-topic here, but this discussion reminds me of the following anecdote:

One Mr. Turner insisted on signing his name Phtholognyrrh, while continuing to pronounce it Turner. When asked to explain the strange spelling he said: "Look, the phth is like phthisic, which is pronounced t; olo is like colonel, which is pronounced ur; gn as in gnat is pronounced n; and yrrh, as in myrrh, is pronounced er. So you have Turner. Nothing could be simpler."

Ryan T, dig through SF sites and look for the contra-phonetic alphabet. They love that sort of thing.

I'm reminded of GB Shaw's "ghoti" = fish:

gh as in 'enough'
o as in 'women'
ti as in 'station'

In Where Eagles Dare – Richard Burton refers to Clint Eastwood as "Leftenent".

End of argument LOL.

Pronounced Leftenant for Army, Lieutenant for Navy.