Re: CHAT: "boocoo"

Christophe Grandsire scripsit:

> Are you talking about that "curnel" pronunciation? In this case I can't
> even imagine that it's "pronounced like French". French is "colonel" and
> pronounced [kolo"nEl]. It has no other pronunciation I ever heard of.
Nope, French.  Italian colonello < COLUMNELLUS, leader of a (military)
column, got borrowed into French twice.  The first time, it became
"coronel" in French, possibly on the notion that it was < CORONA +
-ELLUS, but maybe just another of those l/r interchanges.

This spread to English and Spanish before being replaced in French
itself by the second borrowing from Italian.  The spelling, but not the
pronunciation, of this second form then entered English, leaving us with
"l" in the spelling and /r/ in the pronunciation.  Go figure.

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan
Promises become binding when there is a meeting of the minds and consideration
is exchanged. So it was at King's Bench in common law England; so it was
under the common law in the American colonies; so it was through more than
two centuries of jurisprudence in this country; and so it is today.
       --_Specht v. Netscape_

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