Re: If you call me crazy again...

Andreas Johansson escreva:

> Is it just me, or is H the stupidestly named character in the Alphabet?
(I'm
> of course talking English terms here - for instance German /ha:/ or
Swedish
> /ho:/ are about as nice as one'd ask for.) How did you manage to end up
with
> /eitS/?
The original Latin name was /ha:/, IIRC. When initial /h/ became silent,
/a:/ would have been mixed up with the name for <a>, so the Romans said
/aka/ instead, prefixing the sound and making the <h> cound like a <c>.
Following the normal rules of French diachronic soundchanges /aka/ became
/&k&/, then /&:tS@/ (at which point it was borrowed into English, following
the Great Vowel Shift it then became our /eitS/) and finally giving the
Modern French "âche" /aS/. The Vulgar Latin /aka/ also gives Italian acca
/akka/.

We covered all this a while ago, I think.

Dan

----------------------------------
La plus belle fois qu'on m'a dit
          "je t'aime"
                   c'était un mec
                             qui me l'a dit...
Francis Lalane
----------------------------------

Reply