The Yank on the right wears the shoulder patch of the 26th Infantry Division. This unit was made up of National Guard units from states in New England and was nicknamed the Yankee Division (hence the YD on the patch). A lot of the individual units could trace their history back to Colonial times. The 26th fought around Chateau Thierry and in the St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne Offensives.
Where does the "left"tenant come from? I get the "lieu" from like "in place of" a position.
According to military customs, a lower ranking soldier walks on the left side of a senior officer. This courtesy developed when swords were still used on the battle field. The lower ranked soldier on the "left" protected the senior officers left side. Therefore, the term leftenant developed
According to military customs, a lower ranking soldier walks on the left side of a senior officer. This courtesy developed when swords were still used on the battle field. The lower ranked soldier on the "left" protected the senior officers left side. Therefore, the term leftenant developed
Source: Google
Google contributing yet again to misinformation and fake news. That wording you used has been endlessly copypasta'd which Google's AI takes to mean "oh, people say it all the time, so it MUST be true."
Real reason: Some Brits decided to imitate the French pronunciation and messed it up slightly. This then stuck.
(This is also true for a lot of English words of French origin. And the insertion of an extraneous "u" in many words like "colour".)
Google contributing yet again to misinformation and fake news. That wording you used has been endlessly copypasta'd which Google's AI takes to mean "oh, people say it all the time, so it MUST be true."
Real reason: Some Brits decided to imitate the French pronunciation and messed it up slightly. This then stuck.
(This is also true for a lot of English words of French origin. And the insertion of an extraneous "u" in many words like "colour".)
Where does the "left"tenant come from? I get the "lieu" from like "in place of" a position.
TL;DR no one really knows for definite.
However my best guess is that it comes from the way U and V were treated in writing in middle French/English as well as from Latin, and how many words didn't have concrete pronunciations back then. In the 14th century there are references to it being written as "luftenand" in Scots and "luef" in place of "lieu" in Old French. "lius" is also an old French spelling. So the way "lius" would be written could be as I have just wrote it, or as "livf", which would make it be pronounced as "luff/leff". However for all intents and purposes, the original (modern, post-middle) English pronunciation has been as "leff", while American English is as "lieu".
You are correct with the "lieu" coming from the "in lieu of" as we would say in English, this stems back to French where "lieu" means "place", with "tenant" being present tense for "tenir", which means "to have"/"to hold". So a reasonable translation would be "to hold in place (of)".
(This is also true for a lot of English words of French origin. And the insertion of an extraneous "u" in many words like "colour".)
That's actually because "colour" was a spelling of the Latin word "color" in Old French. This "colour" also passed into Anglo-Norman as "colur". It's worth noting that Anglo-Norman words often took English words and re-spelled them with French spelling rules, so it's possible that in Old English it was pronounced as "col-oor" and not as we would now say "color" (for IPA readers, /ˈkʌl.lu(ɹ)/ as opposed to the modern /ˈkʌl.ə(ɹ)/). That's just a theory though, but the u in words like colour is not something done only in English for no reason.
