Talk:Warspite/@comment-26843989-20160813132006/@comment-29621306-20160813182954

217.42.197.217 already gave some brilliant insights on this subject, so I'm only going to add a little more.

The dictionary which gave us "ad-my-ral"  was from 1790, yet the change in pronunciation occured not in 20th century, instead it occured quite more rapidly, in this English Dictionary of 1835 (https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=UTVAAAAAYAAJ) admiral is already "ad-me-ral"(check page 68 for 'admiral'), and by 1914 when HMS Warspite was commissioned, she would pronounce Admiral like we now did, instead of ad-my-ral.

So for a WW1 super-dreadnaght, her weird accent seems strange and outdated. However if you think it as a linguistic sign of her soul linking to all HMS Warspites before her all the way to 16th century, that would make sense. Personally I would accept the later as a romantic explanation, although all her english except 'admiral' is fine and modern.