Oh I’m sure me saying that is interesting from your POV. But I’m agreeing with your point, English does it totally wrong for sure.

And if the -er sound is as rare as you say, then I guess the pronunciation is just implied.

I don’t know exactly why (nor do I care enough to dig into the history of this detail) American English went with “lee-tur” or more casually, “lee-dur”(almost exactly like the word “leader”, but if they had home with spelling it correctly, than it would’ve been pronounced differently.

So it was one thing or the other was gonna be different, simply because we actually do have that sound that makes the spelling look wrong to us.

I think I did get a little offended by the jest, but not consciously or intentionally.

I have learned about the relative rarity of the -er sound in most places. It’s very common in this language, so that’s surprising to me.