Princeton's WordNet (3.00 / 2 votes) Rate this definition: safety (noun). the state of being certain that adverse effects will not be caused by some agent under defined conditions. insure the safety of the children; the reciprocal of safety is risk.
Conversely, the Spanish were also pronouncing it the same way, but with a different etymological origin! The Spanish understood the word âcoronelâ as the officer of the âcrownâ rather than that of the âcolumnâ. It is possible that both the French and the Spanish pronunciation affected the English one. The English had already begun to use the word âcoronelâ, which became bastardized by their accent to be pronounced as âkernelâ, with an open ambiguous ârâ in the middle overshadowing the âoâ.
It is simply a rule of thumb for people who are unfamiliar with Irish (e.g., most English-speaking people outside Ireland). As an example of what I mean, most English-speaking people in California or the U.S. Southwest, seeing the placename San Joaquin, would pronounce it San Wah-KEEN.ach consonant is pronounced either in a broad or slender way, according to the surrounding vowels. Irish spelling requires that the vowels match on either side of a consonant, which is summarized as Caol le caol, leathan le leathan (Slender with slender, broad with broad).