Re: French

Tristan <kesuari@...>:

>On the subject of French and lieutenant, where'd the /f/ come from in
>the Commonwealth pronunciation of it?
Whoa. Exactly this day, the 18th, seven months ago, I asked the same damn
thing. I got this answer:

QUOTE Ray Brown:
On Tuesday, June 18, 2002, at 12:27 , Clint Jackson Baker wrote:

 >Here's a theory--|u| and |v| come from the same Latin
 >source.  |v| is pronounced /f/ in German--maybe it's
 >all connected.

Not just a theory either.  The letters {u} and {v} were _not_
distinguished until the Italian renaissance.   The Roman letter was {V};
{u} was developed as the lower case form during the Middle Ages.

But to return to the question.  The word, of course, is old French and is
yet another thing bequeathed to us by the Normans (lieu tenant = holding a
position).   _lieu_ would have reached us as [lj2w] which we Saxons would
soon have unrounded to [l(j)ew].

It seems there was a different dialect treatment of -eft- ~ -ewt- , cf. "a
newt" and "an eft", both from Old English "an efeta".   Those who said
/eft/ while their neighbors said /ewt]/ obviously did the same with their
neighbors' /lewtenant/, saying /leftenant/ instead - and the rest, as they
say, is history.

Ray.

UNQUOTE

M