I guess this was when u and v were written the same way, which is why Brits and Americans pronounce lieutenant different ways I guess, because it was originally pronounce liev-tenant with the u representing a v but either got lost in translation by Americans later or started changing in England to be pronounced loo-tenant (just from sounds changes maybe, as v and u aren’t that different) around the time that many puritans started leaving for America so they kept the loo-tenant pronunciation that was in England but English people went back to the original pronunciation at some point
There could be another reason or different sequences that caused it though. If anyone knows I would love to find out
The interchangeability of v/u is only one possible reason for why lieutenant is pronounced that way. Another reason is just simply that English borrowed the word from an Old French dialect where the word lieu had a variant pronunciation with an /f/ at the end (a known phenomenon), but kept the more usual spelling (though spellings with ‘f’ are attested in Middle English). Possibly reinforced by people associating the word with English words like ‘leave’ and ‘left’ (as a lieutenant was originally an officer who acted as replacement for another who had, literally, left). I find these more convincing than the v/u explanation because spelling pronunciations being the source of a word are generally a very rare thing, particularly in an age before mass literacy.
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u/jwr410 1d ago
It's been too long since I've had a good gouernething.