That’s it really. Why is the word ‘gubernatorial’ and not ‘governatorial’?
If you knew some of our governors over here, you’d understand the whole “guber” thing.
Dale
It was originally goobernatorial, since so many of them are goobers… they changed it to make it just a tad less obvious.
Jimmy Carter started it. 
I thot it wud hav bin Dan Quayle or one of th other duuds whu cnat speel.
pootatoeoeoe…
“Gubernatorial” is American-English, formed in the mid 1700s from the Latin “gubenator,” whereas “governor” comes in from Old French “governer,” which also comes from Latin but stops off in Normandy to change out some vowels and consonants before heading across the channel.
So, if Arnold were Latin, he would be “The Gubenator.”
I know it sounds like it, but I’m not making this up – http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=gubernatorial&searchmode=none
Hey that’s a cool web site.
Usually when we have messed up words or pronounciations (i.e. colonel) it can be blamed on Latin in one way or another.
colonel – 1548, “coronell,” from M.Fr. “coronel,” modified by dissimilation from It. “colonnella” – “commander of a column of soldiers at the head of a regiment,” from “compagna colonella” – “little column company,” from L. “columna” – “pillar” (see hill). Eng. spelling modified 1583 to conform with It., but the earlier pronunciation was retained.
Don’t blame Latin. It was OK when they had it last. Blame the French, who apparently could not pronounce it right when they heard it from the Italians.
Do you not know that French and Italian both were, at one point, still Latin? So yes it is appropriate to blame Latin here. If it were not for Latin, there would be no French or Italian at all.
Thanks for the link - that site’s gone straight into my favourites.
I’ll take ‘The Bloody Obvious’ for $500, Alex.
Latin pronunciation was very regular, and if English got its words directly from Latin, English pronunciation would be more regular than it is. But English tends to get its Latin-based words from the daughter languages after the pronunciation has been mangled by the provincials.
To say that Latin is to be “blamed” for irregular pronunciation in English simply because a number of irreglarly pronounced words derived from Latin is a post hoc argument. You could as easily attribute it to Indo-European roots or the receding of the glaciers. And your logic would be equally fallacious.