Many of the questions we receive at That's What They Say have to do with pronunciation. More specifically, a lot of people have asked us why some words are pronounced differently in British English than they are in American English. This includes words like "tomato," "basil," and "mobile."
Our listener Linda Engel recently noticed another word to add to that list: "[While] watching Ken Burns' American Revolution on PBS, I heard the word 'leftenant' [sic] for a military rank. I know the word as 'lieutenant' with a letter 't' not 'f.'"
What Engel heard while watching this documentary was the British English pronunciation of "lieutenant," which, as she notes, sounds like "left-TEN-ant." Despite how different it sounds from the American English version, "lieutenant" is spelled the same on both sides of the pond, and both pronunciations have deep historical roots.
"Lieutenant" entered English from French in the late 1300s. It comes from words meaning “place” and “holding,” so a lieutenant was literally someone who held another person’s place. Over time, the term became an official title for military officers and later, for positions such as police lieutenants and lieutenant governors.
Linguists say the British pronunciation is not a recent invention. Evidence suggests that multiple pronunciations may have existed in Old French before the word entered English. Some theories propose that a sound in the original French word was interpreted by English speakers as an “f” or “v” sound, helping produce the pronunciation heard in Britain today.
For centuries, both pronunciations coexisted, and people argued about which one was correct. To hear more about the journey of "lieutenant" and its pronunciations, listen to the audio above.
