Why is the British pronunciation of lieutenant "leftenant"? And on a side note, is there a "rightenent?"

Have you ever thought it's called speaking "English" so the British must be right as the language originated there in the first place.

true in most cases. here though, it's a french word. an old french word...derived from latin. the "ieu" combination screams "this is french". the americans (while they dont pronounce it excatly like the french) retain the "oo" sound like the french do. now, it's silly to argue the more-correct pronunciation when the american way is THE way in america and the british way is THE way in the UK and commonwealth. however, if you really want to get into it, whichever way is closest to the original french (where this non-english word came from) is most-correct and the US is closer to the french way than the UK is. this is not an irregularity either. during the norman conquest of britain TONS of the french language was spread throughout england and severely corrupted by the common-folk. in fact, during that time if a document wasnt in latin, it was written using half english and half french words in english grammar and syntax.
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by lhs04 on February 16th, 2010
The Normans brought French to Britain long before the Americans heard of the French.
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by Abbra gone Underground on December 11th, 2010

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