Reconstruction:Latin/acca

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This Latin entry contains reconstructed terms and roots. As such, the term(s) in this entry are not directly attested, but are hypothesized to have existed based on comparative evidence.

Latin

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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The earliest Latin name of H was ha. The loss of /h/ in common speech before the end of the Republican period made this name indistinct from a (the letter A), driving its replacement by *acca much later.

The OED sees *acca as a phonological normalisation of *ahha, a reinforcement of ha (compare the later development of michi, nichil). Sheldon instead sees here a fusion of ha + ka (the letter K). He notes that the practice of Latin grammarians was to separate the alphabet into vowels, "semivowels" (continuant consonants) and mutes. The list of mutes was B C D G H K P Q T, and in recitation of this sequence, ... ge ha ka pe..., the ha and ka could have accreted together. This would also explain the variant form *aca, found in Portuguese.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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*acca (Proto-Italo-Western-Romance)

  1. The name of the letter H.

Synonyms

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Coordinate terms

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Descendants

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  • Catalan: hac
  • Corsican: acca
  • Italian: acca
  • Old French: ache
    • Middle French: ache
      • French: ache (see there for further descendants)
    • Middle English: ache
      • English: aitch (see there for further descendants)
    • Spanish: hache
  • Occitan: acha
  • Portuguese: agá (< *acá)

References

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  • Sheldon, E. S. (1890) The origin of the English names of the letters of the alphabet., Harvard University, pages 82-87