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I have to admit that it really irritates me whenever somebody in the movies says the word "lieutenant." Know why? It's because they inveriably will pronounce it "left-tenant," which is an army pronunciation. In the navy, the word is pronounced "l'tenant." (I assume because of the navy's greater contact with the French, but I've never made a study into the linguistics of it.)
Hearing it wrong, time and time again, is rather akin to listening to a persistent squeak in a chair -- not quite to the level of fingernails on blackboard, but damn irritating nonetheless. I suppose that, considering that these are the same people who gave us nearly recoil-less cannon and lieutenants who ran around in dress uniform for the first series, I shouldn't be all that surprised to discover that such minutia escaped their notice. Still, it's sloppy, and I find sloppiness especially irritating when people are supposedly getting paid to keep it from happening.
I've actually managed to train myself to ignore it after about the first or so time I hear it in any of the movies, and when I write I hear the characters saying it properly, so no issues there. Most of the time, reading fanfic is the same. The character's voices are in my head alone, so no pronunciation faux pas need be made. Unfortunately, every so often I'll run across a story in which the author has made the decision to write some of the dialogue phonetically ... and my progress in reading the story comes to a grinding halt as I gnash my teeth and mutter, "No, no, no, no..." upon seeing "Leftenant,' or some variation thereof. This happens each and every time I read the word, though with somewhat less force, and seriously hampers my ability to enjoy the story.
Granted, the folks doing this probably don't know any better -- they're just taking their cues from the movies -- but still! Phonetic spellings aren't really appropriate unless one is trying to convey the fact that a particular character (or set of characters) speaks differently from the rest, anyway. Obviously, this is not the case here.
In the end, I can neither go back and fix the movies, nor compell other writers to change the way they wish to write. I shall simply have to struggle on, dealing with the irritation. I do think that, one of these days, I shall have to write a little scene in which Horatio and Archie have a discussion with Edrington on the proper pronunciation of "lieutenant." It'll make me feel better, anyway.
~RB