I expected lots of "al" and "el" words to be from Arabic (although not "elixir" -- it looks so darn Greek spelled that way).
The ones that I hadn't thought of were the ones like "adobe." In Arabic, the l from the definite article al elides with the first letter of the next word, if the next word starts with a "sun letter." For example, "peace" is written al-salaambut pronounced as-salaam. So "adobe" comes from al-Tobe, which would be pronoucned aT-Tobe -- the definite article is there, but you don't see it the English spelling. (Plus, I thought "adobe" was a Spanish word. :-)
The sun letters, BTW, are t, th, d, dh, r, z, s, sh, S, D, T, Z, and n. Any idea why those are treated differently from other letters, Y_Pestis?
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timeasmymeasure
Re: nifty!
Date: 2004-07-28 08:59 am (UTC)The ones that I hadn't thought of were the ones like "adobe." In Arabic, the l from the definite article al elides with the first letter of the next word, if the next word starts with a "sun letter." For example, "peace" is written al-salaambut pronounced as-salaam. So "adobe" comes from al-Tobe, which would be pronoucned aT-Tobe -- the definite article is there, but you don't see it the English spelling. (Plus, I thought "adobe" was a Spanish word. :-)
The sun letters, BTW, are t, th, d, dh, r, z, s, sh, S, D, T, Z, and n. Any idea why those are treated differently from other letters, Y_Pestis?