Re: If you call me crazy again...

David Peterson wrote:
>     The cop-out answer is that it came from French: /AS/ spelled "ache".  But
> where did IT come from?
Well, it was /AtS@/ when borrowed into English.  That in turn was
derived from Late Latin _acca_ (/Aka/ -> /AtSa/ -> /AtS@/; /k/ became
/tS/ before front /a/, hence _chamber_ from _camera_), formed to replace
the earlier _he_, which, after /h/ became silent, was homophonous with
_e_.  The use of /k/ was, apparently, an attempt to imitate the /h/
sound by people whose dialect had lost it.  The Spanish _hache_ was a
borrowing from French, replacing the earlier form, which was something
like Modern Portuguese's _aga_.

--
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A nation without a language is a nation without a heart - Welsh proverb
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