chocolate

Mark Mandel thnidu at GMAIL.COM
Fri Mar 26 03:04:57 UTC 2010


On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 10:44 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> FWIW, I've long been under the impression that the original
> transliteration was _x_ocolatl. Cf. W:pedia:
>
> The Nahuatl word _xocolatl_ means bitter water.
>
> As for spellings with j-, in early modern Spanish, _x_ was /S/. /S/
> later became /j/. Cf. Castilian Méjico vs. Mexican México, which
> maintains the antique spelling with _x_.


Which is why the French call the Knight of the Doleful Countenance "Don
Quichotte".

m a m

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