How did whoever invented the word Colonel get people to believe that it sounds like Kernel?

It was either a colossal mistake that no one bothered to fix or, as I presume, it was the greatest practical joke that’s ever been played on a language.

How else could we rationalize the Colonel/Kernel situation? I’d like to hear some linguist try and tell me tacking a ‘nel’ on the end of Colo and Ker makes them phonetically the same and still keep a straight face. I’ll be convinced when funnel and phenomenal are homonyms.

The Colonel question has plagued me since I could read. It breaks every rule in the book – hooked on phonics, baby – and no one, but me, has ever seemed to care. And for as much as I’ve thought about it, I’ve never looked for the answer. Why not? This is a case where it’s a lot more fun to dream up one’s own conclusions.

First: If I thought the explanation behind Colonel sounding like Kernel would crack the case on some near-ancient mystery, then sure, I’d scour the earth, er, Wikipedia, for it. But I figure if it were some goof, people infinitely smarter than me would’ve already fixed it. Second: If knowing why Colonel sounded like Kernel was worth a sailor’s cold sore, I would have cleared it up by now.

It’s one of those trivial mysteries that’s better left unsolved. Better left to our imaginations, where we can draw our own conclusions rather than learn what’s probably a simple, boring answer anyway. So trivial, that it won’t matter what kind of BS answer I give to spice up why two words that shouldn’t produce the same utterance in a million years do.

And I say it was literate people messing with us from way back when, when most people couldn’t read and didn’t know the difference.

“Hey serfs, see these two configurations made up of completely different symbols?”