August 16, 20205 yr Probably the Brits just didn't want to cop to using a French word. lol I heard a weird and long winded explanation once about how it went back to the sword age, when a junior officer was to be on the left of a senior officer, so as to be able to defend him better, but I don't buy it, since that only makes sense if they were to have changed the spelling as well, but no. Brits spell it Lieutenant, and say Leftenant. (and most people are right handed, so being on the left makes no defensive sense either) Thank goodness we had Daniel Webster to at least try to clean some of this up. 🙂 In my academic days, I studied both French and German (I'm hopeless in either now) much cleaner and more coherent languages than English.
August 17, 20205 yr 21 hours ago, ShawnG said: Probably the Brits just didn't want to cop to using a French word. lol One of the rare occasions when you'd be more correct to substitute "English" for Brits.😙 Granted, it was a 'United Kingdom' which fought Napoleon, but the Scots have historically had a good relationship with the French (The Auld Alliance), and the Welsh, Irish and Scots have had enough issues with the English over the years!😉* * Note: The above is a historical, rather than modern political comment! 21 hours ago, ShawnG said: Thank goodness we had Daniel Webster to at least try to clean some of this up. 🙂 Whereas in the UK we'd say Pah! And thank Richard Chenevix Trench, Herbert Coleridge, and Frederick Furnivall, I studied German too. Never liked having 16 words for 'the', but always loved the tidy (if long-winded) way German just squashes words together to make one long one. My favourite being 'Speed limit' - Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung.😎 Edited August 17, 20205 yr by 109Sqn OS: Win11 Home; Mobo: Asus TUF Gaming Z690-Plus WiFi D4; CPU: Intel i5-12400 (Alder Lake) 4.4 GHzRAM: Corsair Vengeance DDR4 64Gb (4x16GB) 3600 MHz; GPU: MSI Radeon RX 5700XT [8GB] SSD: Corsair Force MP510 (for OS); 2x 1TB & 1x 2TB Sabrent Rocket Nvme PCIe 4.0 (one for sim, two for addons)HDD: Seagate 3TB (Data); Seagate 1TB (Programs), ASUS TUF Gaming VG32VQ1B Curved 31.5" monitor, 1440p, 38Mbs ethernet Fulcrum One Yoke, Honeycomb Bravo throttle, Thrustmaster Airbus TCA sidestick & throttle, Logitech Pro pedals, Xbox wireless gamepad (1st gen)
August 17, 20205 yr 23 hours ago, ShawnG said: Probably the Brits just didn't want to cop to using a French word. lol Some didn’t and proposed to replace it by steadholder which didn’t catch up 🙂. Steadholder... A mouthful when calling a person in a hot situation. Would have degenerated in stead’older. And imagine subordinates saying « hey look the steadie coming our way., », Not serious. Dominique Simming since 1981 - [email protected] GHz with 16 GB of RAM and a 1080 with 8 GB VRAM running a 27" @ 2560*1440 - Windows 10 - Warthog HOTAS - MFG pedals - MSFS Standard version with Steam
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