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curious, why do British pronounce the rank of "lieutenant" as "Left-tenant" and not "Lew-tenant" ?

and why do you pronounce "Aluminum" as "alu-min-ee-um"?

I've been watching a lot of Doctor Who and Top Gear on BBC America lately and wondered, thanks

Because we're better than you yanks

Tis a speech impediment, they can't help it. Everyone knows us Americans doing everything the best way, and everything else is second hand cast away garbage.

Quoth the chap with a sluthern dwaal

Back swiftly on topic, not sure and have wondered my sen
Is a bit like the name St. John which is pronounced Sinjen
or Magdelaine College, Oxford which is pronounced Maudlin

Both of those are a posh persons thing and is as far as I can make out all their fault.

Speculative explaination before googling
Lieutenant is a softer sound and Leftenant it may have been easier to discern when shouted across a busy deck


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wiki don't know the origin
So my theory is as good as any for now!

Not too sure on the left-tenant one though it's probably linked to the fact they are originally french rank designations. Aluminium comes from the fact there are two spellings of it. The UK (and international standard spelling) has a second I after the N changing the pronunciation. The US spelling is listed as an accepted variant.

Also too much opportunity for derisive lavatorial humour calling someone Loo Tenant

Like, Lootenant Gribblings is a really gakk officer

and

Please don't gakk on Lootenant Gribblings. Stick yer arse over the side of the poop deck!

Aluminium

A-lue-min-i-um

Not a-loo-min-umm

Like Nuclear - new-clear. Not nook-lear.

Lt I don't know why.

Because we came first and you're mucking up our wonderful language!

a-loo-min-umm

The toilet thing again

am starting to see a pattern in the American pronunciations

dsteingass wrote:curious, why do British pronounce the rank of "lieutenant" as "Left-tenant" and not "Lew-tenant" ?

Old english/french.

and why do you pronounce "Aluminum" as "alu-min-ee-um"?

We spell it differently.

We spell it "Aluminium" and pronounce it accordingly.

Now explain why you americans can't say Antarctica properly.

LMAO! we don't use loo. haha
Interesting about the spelling of Aluminum. And the deck thing, I get that. My TV is stuck on BBC, I play with British toy soldiers, and Black Library novels have a lot of shrugging going on in them.

Darn British... just speak English, like the rest of the world!

Not to ruin your fun, but we came first, our language that you bastardised.

Azza007 wrote:Not to ruin your fun, but we came first, our language that you bastardised.

German here. British English is small-time.

Please don't spam the forum. Thanks ~Manchu

I llike how they pronounce Hyundai. High-un-die. Makes me smile every time they say that on TopGear

Phototoxin wrote:Aluminium

A-lue-min-i-um

Not a-loo-min-umm

Actually there's a bit more of a story to that one, Humphry Davy, the British scientist who isolated the metal from alum, originally chose 'aluminum'; it was only later revised to 'aluminium' to match the then-current system for naming newly-isolated elements. Strictly-speaking, since its oxide is called 'alumina', not 'aluminia' (as lanthanum's is lanthana and magnesium's magnesia) the American spelling has the better claim to correctness.

Despite this, however, the official spelling, as used by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry is the British one, presumably because chemists are concerned with other properties of things than their etymology.

That's cool..I ddnt mean to start a "lasgun" pronouncing thread (since everybody knows it's las not laze)

I like it when Germans speak english, th makes completely different sounds.

Azza007 wrote:Not to ruin your fun, but we came first, our language that you bastardized.

You mean, the language of English? That Frankenstein of old Romantic languages haphazardly sewn together in a weak cloth developed by gathering foreigners?


/Said the Red-Neck

Kasrkai wrote:

Azza007 wrote:Not to ruin your fun, but we came first, our language that you bastardized.

You mean, the language of English? That Frankenstein of old Romantic languages haphazardly sewn together in a weak cloth developed by gathering foreigners?


/Said the Red-Neck

Hey, we speak English good!

halonachos wrote:

Kasrkai wrote:

Azza007 wrote:Not to ruin your fun, but we came first, our language that you bastardized.

You mean, the language of English? That Frankenstein of old Romantic languages haphazardly sewn together in a weak cloth developed by gathering foreigners?


/Said the Red-Neck

Hey, we speak English good!

Point being, English is a collaberation of other Romantic languages.

So, English at all it's roots, is "Bastardized".

We've also got a couple Norwegian things in there, taken the plural of child and ox for example. According to rules it should be childs and oxes but is instead children and oxen, an old Norse way of pluralization

Like most things in life the British version of English is better.

Don't know, the American version of America is better than the British version. The colonies were so small compared to American America.

halonachos wrote:Don't know, the American version of America is better than the British version. The colonies were so small compared to American America.

Quantity does not equal quality.

Cheesecat wrote:

halonachos wrote:Don't know, the American version of America is better than the British version. The colonies were so small compared to American America.

Quantity does not equal quality.

Says the man from Canada.

Coolyo294 wrote:

Cheesecat wrote:

halonachos wrote:Don't know, the American version of America is better than the British version. The colonies were so small compared to American America.

Quantity does not equal quality.

Says the man from Canada.

Just to prove doubters I'll list a few things Britain does "objectivity" better than anyone else it's music, colonizing, cops, being gentlemanly, humour, TV shows, Top Gear, attempts at successfully taking over the

world, beating Napoleon at Waterloo, etc. The only thing Britain isn't better at is preparing food, that would be France.

Things Britain is better at:








Things France is better at:

Cheesecat wrote:

Coolyo294 wrote:

Cheesecat wrote:

halonachos wrote:Don't know, the American version of America is better than the British version. The colonies were so small compared to American America.

Quantity does not equal quality.

Says the man from Canada.

Just to prove doubters I'll list a few things Britain does "objectivity" better than anyone else it's music, colonizing, cops, being gentlemanly, humour, TV shows, Top Gear, attempts at successfully taking over the

world, beating Napoleon at Waterloo, etc. The only thing Britain isn't better at is preparing food, that would be France.

Things Britain is better at:








Things France is better at:

Yeah. Beat that, England.

Coolyo294 wrote:Yeah. Beat that, England.

Please, it's Britain, not England.

And as such, there is this 'delicacy' from scotland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-fried_Mars_bar

Consider yourself beat.