Second-language.com

[bill_m]

A lot of Latin words began with "ca", and Spanish and Italian and other Romance languages honored this. But a lot of the French cognates have a "cha" instead, such as "caritas"(Lat), "carita'"(Ita), "caridad"(Spa), but "charity" in English, through the French "charité".

What's the deal with the French? What caused them to mess with this rather basic sound?
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Latin is a dead language...

[michael_george]

When the Romans occupied France, it had a large Celtic population. The Celtic languages are famous for changing the [i]beginning [/i]of words as well as the ends of words for different uses in a sentence. They especially aspirated consonants at the beginning of words ("F"->"FH", "M"->"MH"="v"), etc.

Any chance that the "c" to "ch" shift was related to this?
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Michael George

[jd]

If that were true, why would it be only with "C" followed by "a" and not other vowels? Hmmmn, well, "cher" comes from "cara", doesn't it?

But what about "co-" words?...oh! "cosa"->"chose"! Are there any other French words that begin with "cho-" that came from Latin "co-"?
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Rana Pipiens

[michael_george]

Huh, this does seem to be more common with "ca-" than with other constructions...

campus - champ
camera - chambre
catena - chaine
calor (Sp) - chaleur
candele - chandelle
cambiare - change(?)
canto - chant
capello - chapelle
cada (Sp) - chaque
caricare - charge
carita' - charite'
carta - charte
cacciare - chasser
castita' - chastete'
gatto - chat
castello - chateau
calzone - chausette

Any more?
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Michael George

[tricia_s]

How about all the che- words?

capo - chef
camino - chemin
caro - cher
camisa - chemise
cercare - cherche
cavallo - cheval
capelli - cheveux
capro - chevre
(casa) - chez
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Why do the Spanish laugh when an Italian asks for "pan' e burro"?