Why is Colonel pronounced the way it is?
The word ‘colonel‘ stems from the Italian word ‘colonnello’, which, in turn, was derived from the Italian word ‘colonna’ meaning ‘column’. This was because the rank was bestowed upon the commander of a column of troops. This is the reason why ‘colonel‘ is pronounced ‘kernel’.
Where is the R in Colonel?
You asked, we answered. Why is the word “colonel” pronounced with an “r” sound when it is not spelled with an “r”? “Colonel” came to English from the mid-16th-century French word coronelle, meaning commander of a regiment, or column, of soldiers.
How do British pronounce 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.
Is it Coronel or Colonel?
So when the Italian word colonello was taken into French, it became coronel; and the word was borrowed by the English from the French in this form. Later the spelling colonel came to be used in order to reflect the Italian origin of the word. But by then the pronunciation with r was well established.