Why is "colonal" pernounced "KER-nal?"?

Answer 1

First, the English did NOT "mess up the French word". The change to "r" happened in the Romance languages and was borrowed into English. A few details are unclear but it went something like this:

1) The earlier name for this officer was "colonnello", a form found in Old Italian and going back to Latin for "line commander" (through "colonna", meaning "line" from Latin "columna" [cf. "column"]; the Latin name of the officer was columnellus).

2) In Spain, around 1505 (under King Ferdinand), we find an altered form of this word -- "coronel" (which is STILL the Spanish word for "colonel").

How this Spanish form came about is explained as either

a) it was deliberatelyl created/altered to mark the person as an officer of the "crown", i.e., the king (Spanish for "crown" is "corona"); some say this came from confusion about the word's origins
http://www.history.navy.mil/trivia/triv4-5i.htm

OR
b) it was just an example of "dissimilation" -- a natural sound change in which one of two similar or identical sounds in the same word changes.
http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/alike1.html

Shifts of one L in a word to R in Latin and Romance languages are well-known (we see it, for instance, in the adjective ending -al, which becomes -al after words ending with L; thus we have "orbit" > "orbital" but "module" > "modular".. just try saying "modulal" and you'll understand why it was changed!)
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=225168
http://cspeech.ucd.ie/~fred/teaching/oldcourses/phonetics/rules1.html

(My take --very likely, "coronel" came about by dissimilation, and was THEN re-interpreted [not invented] as related to "crown")


3) By 1538 the English are using the word "coronel", borrowed either directly from the Spanish, or from Middle French. By a slight shortening of the vowels (a common enough change) it soon is pronounced /kern'l/. This continues to be THE pronunciation in English.

Meanwhile, the FRENCH shift BACK to "colonel"
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-col1.htm

(In other words, if you can't see it coming... "the FRENCH are to blame!!")

4) Later (in the 17th century) the form "colonel" was borrowed from Modern French. This was apparently an effort to go back and get the "correct" etymological form. For a time BOTH written forms -- "coronel" and "colonel" -- are found in English, but eventually in the 19th century the pedants who do this succeed in establishing the "correct spelling" as "colonel". BUT they do NOT succeed in getting people to change from the established English pronunciation /kern'l/.

(In other words, the real shift here was adopting the Modern French spelling "colonel". The problem is NOT from the English "messing up" a French word, but because English grammarians showed RESPECT for the French!)

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As for the British pronunciation of "lieutenant", that's another of those English-meets-French (with less that satisfactory results) things -- check out:
http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20000107

Answer 2

First of all, you spelled both words incorrectly. It's Colonel and kernel. These words are called synonyms. AND I think it has something to do with the combination of vowels and consonants.

By the way, the other correct spelling is pronounced.

You may want to check in a Thesaurus for the correct answer as to the pronounciations.

Answer 3

It is a French word. The French pronounce it the way it is spelled. The English, a long time ago, corrupted the pronunciation, probably because they didn't speak French that well. It is spelled C O L O N E L.

Answer 4

Good question... I have always found that annoying. But I think it's "colonel".

Answer 5

colonel is pronunced kernal because back in the day when southerners had accents, that is how it came out.

Answer 6

why is lieutenant pronounced "leftenant"?