Economics colors history colors language. I love following the tangled trails of language across the trade routes of ancient lands. This is easiest to do when following food words.
For instance, take the word “orange.” The orange evidently originated in ancient India. Their Sanskrit word for the fruit was “naranj.” Arab traders bringing the fruit back to their lands called it a “naranjah.” When the North African Arabs ruled Spain, they brought their naranjahs with them, and the name passed into Spanish as “naranja”, pronounced “naranha.” When the English tasted them, they called it a narange. But because of the English rule of changing the article “a” to “an” before a word starting with a vowel, the fruit was mis-spoke as “an arange” until over time it ended up as “an orange.”
Here’s another: The ancient Aztecs in what’s now Mexico had a potent drink made from a bean they called “choco” which meant bitter in their language Nahuatl. The placed the bean into water, or “atl” in Nahuatl, to produce “choco-atl” or “bitter water.” When the Spaniards arrived, they had no “atl” sound in their language, so they misprounced the drink “chocolato.” When the drink was brought to Europe, sugar was added to it, and the name in English became “chocolate.”
Now don’t you think that’s interesting? I do.
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