A simple question:
Why is colonel pronounced "kernel", and is it pronounced similarly in every English speaking country?
TIA
Dear ghost: I sent you a private message.
Dear Bill, now that the question has been raised, if you know the reason, do let the rest of us in on it. I have a vague idea that the spelling came by one etymological route and the pronunciation by another, but I forget the details.
By the way, did USns logically enough drop the f in lieutenant or did UKns add it for some unfathomable reason?
Bingley
"...crystal clear."---Appropriate, since we can see right through a ghost.
Jackie, such status you have achieved! Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?
light at the end of the tunnel
It's the light of the oncoming carp.
AUGHHHHHHHHHHHH! I didn't know, my web-footed friend, I didn't know! Oh, ow, ow, ow! Darn you, Hyla-chic, I wouldn't now be in all this pain if you hadn't pointed it out.
Darn you, Hyla-chic, I wouldn't now be in all this pain if you hadn't pointed it out.
Prior to Jackie's post, I would have said she'd be the last of us to carp...
Come here, Hyla-chic, and I'll seize your carp(e)...
just to add a bit to the AHD etymology, witness OED2
The colonel was so called, because leading the little column or company at the head of the regiment’ (Skeat). The early Fr. coronel (whence also Sp. coronel) was due to the dissimilation of l–l, common in Romanic, though popular etymology associated it with corona, couronne crown. It is still dialectal (see Littré), but was supplanted in literary use, late in 16th c., by the more etymological colonnel; and under this influence and that of translations of Italian military treatises colonel also appeared in Eng. c 1580.
it seems that what we've got here is orthography which reverts to the original etymology and orthoepy which may trace to the French affectations of the Court.
as to lieutenant, OED becomes dog-gone whimsical:
The origin of the btype of forms (which survives in the usual British pronunciation, though the spelling represents the atype) is difficult to explain. The hypothesis of a mere misinterpretation of the graphic form (u read as v), at first sight plausible, does not accord with the facts. In view of the rare OF. form luef for lieu (with which cf. esp. the 15th c. Sc. forms luf-, lufftenand above) it seems likely that the labial glide at the end of OF. lieu as the first element of a compound was sometimes apprehended by Englishmen as a v or f. Possibly some of the forms may be due to association with leave n.1 or lief a.
In 1793 Walker gives the actual pronunciations as (lEv-, lIv"tEn@nt), but expresses the hope that ‘the regular sound, lewtenant’ will in time become current. In England this pronunciation (lju;"tEn@nt) is almost unknown. A newspaper quot. of 1893 in Funk's Standard Dictionary says that (lEf"tEn@nt) is in the U.S. ‘almost confined to the retired list of the navy’.]
(does the Brit. army have the rank of lieutenant colonel?!)
In the course of dicussion, we seem to have lost our "Re".
How, etymologically, did coronel switch to colonel?
It seems that what we've got here is orthography which reverts to the original etymology and orthoepy which may trace to the French affectations of the Court.
Or do we have orthoepy which reverts to the original etymology and orthography which may trace to the French affectations?
Keiva! you were supposed to take Faldage's AHD link, reprinted here with the usual lack of permission: Alteration of obsolete coronel, from French, from Old Italian colonello, from diminutive of colonna, column of soldiers, from Latin columna, column.
tsuwm: so the conclusion is that the french changed the Italian's L to an R; and then the English took the French version but altered it again (and coincidentally, altered it at the same letter, and changed that letter back to the original L again), while retaining the french pronunciation?
Granted that Faldage's source so claims, but does this seems a bit farfetched, absent a mechanism?
And also granted that (if Faldage's source is correct) my final surmise, in my prior post, was mistaken.
Keiva, it ain't that Simple. think about how non-standardized spelling was back when. I didn't think anyone really wanted this much detail, but. The two forms were used indifferently by Barret, Holland, Decker, and others; coronel was the prevailing form till 1630, but disappeared in writing c1650. Of 89 quots. examined before this date, 56 have coronel, 33 colonel, thus distributed: up to 1590 coronel 21, colonel 1; 1591–1630 cor- 31, col- 22; 1631–50 cor- 4, col- 10; 1651– cor- 0. In 17thc. colonell was trisyllabic, and was often accented (in verse) on the last syllable. But by 1669 it began to be reduced in pronunciation to two syllables, col'nel (according to Jones Pract. Phonography, 1701, ("kVln@l)), as recorded by Dr. Johnson 1755–73, and repeated without remark by Todd 1818; in Farquhar's Sir Harry Wildair (1701) it appears familiarly abbreviated to coll. But app. the earlier coronel had never died out of popular use; Dr. A. J. Ellis Eng. Pronunc. 1074/2 cites Dyche 1710 for ("kVr@UnEl), Buchanan 1766 for ("kO;nIl), Sheridan 1780 for ("k3;nEl) the pronunciation now established, though apparently not yet universal in 1816. and recall (from above) that the spelling colonel seems to have finally won out becuase of the etymological relationship to the leader of a column of infantry.
[Nothing is Simple]
So what about a Brevet Colonel?
(anything to get that 100th post!!)
stales
Member stales, congratulations, Sweetie.
Aha! So I guessed right on two points:
1) There's more to it that the American Heritage Dictionary's story; and
2) tsuwm can be relied upon to have the whole story for us.
Thanks, tsuwm.
BTW, is there a term for this kind of a situation, where two variants of a single word are competing within the language?
Re:BTW, is there a term for this kind of a situation, where two variants of a single word are competing within the language?
Normal?
see schedule, honor/honour, etc.. (getting thrown of net
Objection!
Faldage's original link to Bartleby is less than authoritative. It has this to say, emphasis added by me:
1a. abbr. COL or Col or Col. A commissioned rank in the U.S. Army, Air Force, or Marine Corps that is above lieutenant colonel and below brigadier general. b. One who holds this rank or a similar rank in another military organization. 2. An honorary nonmilitary title awarded by some states of the United States.Very good. In one foul swoop, it grabs the word and claims it as an Americanism. So ... the British and French armies didn't have colonels earlier than 1776? Oh, my mistake. I
should have realised!
The US Navy used to have a rank : Commodore. Discontinued sometime after WWII and, I heard, it caused some problems because it left a void between US military and other countries' military when the occasion called for officers of equal rank to meet and parlay.
Commodore ranked just above Captain and below "Admiral, lower half" (aka Rear Admiral) for staff officers.
So, how about countries other than US ... do you still have rank of Commodore?
I think the RAF has a rank air commodore between air group captain and air vice-marshall. Any others?
wow:
Actually commodore is less of a separate rank than it is a separate billet. In the US Navy every military job is a billet, deriving I believe from an assigned berth, called a billet.
The flag ranks in the Navy are:
O (for officer) -7 Rear Admiral, lower half
O-8 Rear Admiral, upper half
O-9 Vice Admiral
O-10 Admiral.
At one time there were equal numbers of O-7s and O-8s, and they were divided literally into two groups, the lower and upper halves. I believe that is no longer the case, but I will check Monday at work (I work in the office of the Government that pays all the military, so these things are all pretty much second nature to me.
There were certain billets in the Navy that were Commodore billets, and O-7s assigned to them had the same rank, but were addressed as commoder, rather than admiral. Some time back I heard they had reinstated this courtesy title, but I've not run into one of them. They are in the combat side, I'm in the finance side.
The equivalent officers in the Army, AF and Marine Corps are brigadier general, major general, lieutenant general, and general, respectively. I heard of a major general who was at a cocktail party in DC where this sweet young thing kept addressing him as major. Finally he turned to her and said, "I am a major general, and I can only thank God that I'm not a rear admiral."
BTW, the next lower rank in the Navy is O-6, captain, but the commanding officer of any naval vessel regardless of rank is the captain of the ship and is so addressed, though he or she will wear only the rank attained (along with the pay for that rank.)
TdE
The walking fount of totally useless and boring information
Totally Useless and Boring Information
Would this phrase be worthy of creating an acronym: TUBI?
ah, Max! I was expecting TEd to enter stage left, but you beat him to the pun(ch).
My sympathies, TEd. As our past president was wont say in southern accent, "Ah phel-ya pain".
Thanks TEd -- I went by the Goggle to a buncha sites ... where I didn't find any "commodore" listing.
A curtsy sent your way, for the useful information.
Send a PM if you get more, please?
I'd been led to believe (somewhat contrary to logic, now that I consider it) that the British use of the v/f sound was an intentional alteration made out of hatred and disrespect for the French. I am, however, lacking any evidence to support such a theory, and think it's probably a load of [insert favourite load here].
Here is a summary of comparative ranks.
It looks to my untrained eye as if a Commodore is a lower half of a rear admiral, it sounds very uncomfortable.
http://www.helsinki.fi/~degroot/anglomil.htmlGoogling tip for non-experts, like me: I tend to throw lots of words at the search engine (leave out the inverted commas). "Commodore" just gave me a load of old Commodore 64s, "Commodore UK" didn't fare much better. "Commodore Navy British" did a little better. Fishing around with "Commodore Compare ranks" gives some other options, eg http://www.toshiro.f2s.com/oob/site/data/india/ranks.html which gives ranks in India. So if your first attempt is too general you can fiddle around with the entry information to refine your search, without having to get too technical.
link to Bartleby is less than authoritative...A commissioned rank in the U.S. Army, Air Force, or Marine Corps
It is the American Heritage Dictionary.
As this miserable excuse remembers it, Commodore is still an extant rank (is that redundant?) in the US Navy. Onliest time you have any, however, is during time of war. In true Navy mishmash fashion the senior Captain in a group of ships (by whatever name that group might be known) would be called Commodore.
>>link to Bartleby is less than authoritative...A commissioned rank in the U.S. Army, Air Force, or Marine Corps
>It is the American Heritage Dictionary.
that particular nit, at least, is well picked. <g>
that particular nit, at least, is well picked. <g>
Hate to...er...nitpick, tsuwm, but should "well picked" be hyphenated? Sans hyphen, your comment would appear to be saying that Faldage's choice of that nit to pick upon was a wise one, eg "That particular nit was well chosen", whereas [I believe] your actual© intent was to point out that a similar argument has been made several times previously.
Or am I just a few fries short of a Happy Meal today?
should "well picked" be hyphenated? Sans hyphen, your comment would
appear to be saying that Faldage's choice of that nit to pick upon was a wise one, eg "That particular nit
was well chosen", whereas [I believe] your actual© intent was to point out that a similar argument has
been made several times previously.
no... and there is a third option: the choice of that particular nit to pick upon (among the many picked upon) was an apt one; i.e., no other value judgment was intended or should be construed thereupon.
I believe your actual intent was to point out that a similar argument has been made several times previously.Had tsumn so intended, he would surely have indulged in the wordplay of saying such nit was "well picked-over".
But conversely ...
guilty,guilty,guilty.. of a YART.. but a wll picked-over nit? your average nit is about the size of a comma , and picking it over requires some rather specialized tools! and to be honest, you just want the nits gone.. they grow up to be cooties.. uggh!
oh, you weren't being literal? silly me.. but once your kids come home from school or camp with an infestation of head lice, nit picking, takes on a very specific meaning.
no other value judgment was intended or should be construed thereupon.
...isn't that what we do best, these days?
Oh~hhhhh, that was your point, wasn't it?
the choice of that particular nit to pick upon (among the many picked upon) was an apt onebut tsuwm, doesn't the entomology of the word nitpick indicate that all nits are fungible, none being more apt for picking than any other?
the word entomology being deliberately used
The nit is, as you no doubt know, one of the two units of currency of the Glorious Empire of Ludicrania. The other is the Half Imperial. The two units are not interconvertible.