chilli

[Rudolph C Troike]

I need to check my Classical Nahuatl dictionary, but the stem
"chil" occurs in the name for a small wild pepper found in Texas and
Arizona (chiltepin in AZ). The noun suffix -tl/-tli, which is responsible
for the -te in Spanish in borrowed words such as "chocolate" and "tomate",
typically assimilates to -li after /l/. So if the stem were "chil", one
would expect, by assimilation, chil + tli --> chil-li.

        Incidentally, I'm always amused by the English pluralization of
"chile relleno" as "chile rellenos" (taking the whole as a unanalyzable
term and pluralizing it at the end) rather than "chiles rellenos" as it
would be in Spanish, with the adjective agreeing in number with the head
noun.
        Rudy