Finally discovering why "Colonel" is pronounced the way it is!! Leads to Gallagher and I Love Lucy!

Colonel Klink - Hogan's Heroes!

A while back  I was writing about Dorothy Parker and I found an article of her quotes at Mental Floss. While I was reading quotes, I saw an intriguing article on the sidebar. From Mental Floss

  Why Is 'Colonel' Spelled That Way?.

English spelling is bizarre. We know that. From the moment we learn about silent “e” in school, our innocent expectations that sound and spelling should neatly match up begin to fade away, and soon we accept that “eight” rhymes with “ate,” “of” rhymes with “love,” and “to” sounds like “too” sounds like “two.” If we do sometimes briefly pause to wonder at these eccentricities, we quickly resign ourselves to the fact that there must be reasons—stuff about history and etymology and sound changing over time. Whatever. English. LOL. Right? It is what it is. But sometimes English takes it a step too far, does something so brazen and shameless we can’t just let it slide. That’s when we have to throw our shoulders back, put our hands on our hips and ask, point blank, what is the deal with the word “colonel”? “Colonel” is pronounced just like “kernel.” How did this happen? From borrowing the same word from two different places. In the 1500s, English borrowed a bunch of military vocabulary from French, words like cavalerie, infanterie, citadelle, canon, and also, coronel. The French had borrowed them from the Italians, then the reigning experts in the art of war, but in doing so, had changed colonello to coronel. Read more

So now I know the answer to a question that I have often pondered! And the pondering doesn't stop at Colonel, it extends to many, many other words! Reading and thinking about this lead me to this routine from Gallagher.....

And in this video Ricky Ricardo also has a little problem with the English language!!!



Here's another article from Mental Floss - 11 Weirdly Spelled Words—And How They Got That Way