There's a post going around about the American vs. British pronunciation of the word "lieutenant," and once again I am fixating on this passage from Frank Mildmay, the 1829 novel by British author and naval officer Frederick Marryat:
The scene takes place during the War of 1812, and Marryat goes out of his way to emphasize that the American captain pronounces the word as "leftenant," spelling it out phonetically.
Is he trying to suggest that this is actually the pronunciation used in the United States, as opposed to the (presumably more correct) British pronunciation? It is debatable how much American accents and British accents actually differed in the early 19th century, given the considerable evidence that American and British sailors sounded very much alike.
My other thought is that Marryat is using eye dialect, to indicate that the "unpolished" American captain is not an educated man. This is a likely explanation, except that standard spellings are used for all of the American dialog, with the exception of "Leftenant."
