This may be a foolish question, but how did it happen that the word chameleon has an h in its spelling but not in its pronunciation?

For the same reason that chaos is pronounced with a k. The word (chameleon) is from one of my favorite PIE roots: dhghem- 'earth' whence Gk chthon.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: jheem,

Same answer as for any Greek word with ch in it. The ch represents the Greek letter chi, which in classical times stood for an aspirated stop, phonetic symbol [kh]. This sound didn't occur in Latin, so when the Romans wrote Greek words they used the combination ch to indicate that it was like Latin c but with an aspiration h added.

Educated Romans knew Greek and used the Greek sound, but the common people just rendered it as a familiar Latin c.

This trade-off between common speech and educated knowledge persisted in Middle French and Middle English, where words that formerly just reflected their contemporary pronunciation were sometimes respelt to allude to their classical origin (so det became debt). This has kept the ch in circulation even though its pronunciation was only ever that of c. Another example from the same Greek root has both: camomile and chamomile.

Interesting. So, there is "chaos," "chamomile," and "chameleon;" are there any others?

"Choir" and "chorus" spring to mind. For some reason "chalcedony" also occurred to me. The must be lots of others.

Quite a few - but not many that are as common as those cited. Common ones include:

Character
Chalcedony (a type of quartz)
Chloral (and the many other chemical terms and substances relating to it such as chlorine and chlorophyll)
Charisma - and its derivatives
Chitin (the exoskeleton of insects, etc.)
Chrysalid and chrysalis
Chasm
Choral and its derivatives
Christ and its many derivatives
Chroma (colour) and its many derivatives
Chrono - and its many derivatives (all to do with time)
Chimera
Chrysanthemum

Less common ones include:

Chalcopyrite (another mineral)
Chalcolitiic (a prehistoric era)
Chaldea (Babylon)
Chorea (I know that because I had the disease!)
Chrysoprase (a semi-precious stone)
Chelonia (a class of reptiles)
Chiasmus (a grammatical term)

Plus others I am quite certain.

Oh, those remind me of cholecystectomy - or removal of the gall bladder. In fact, there are a lot of medical words derived from "chole," such as cholecystitis, choledocholithotomy, cholelithiasis, etc.

(This is addressed particularly to aput and jheem.)

So am I right in understanding that if an English word comes from a Greek root containing the letter chi, then in the English word the equivalent is spelled as c in some cases and as ch in others, but is pronunced consistently as a k-sound?

So am I right in understanding that if an English word comes from a Greek root containing the letter chi, then in the English word the equivalent is spelled as c in some cases and as ch in others, but is pronounced consistently as a k-sound?

Seems like a goodly rule of thumb, but an absolute law? Not sure. Maybe somebody can come up with an exception.

Got one: the ch in chthonic is not pronounced at all.

Almost always. All those words listed above illustrate it.

Exception to spelling: camomile (optionally), and I'll let you know if I think of others.

Exception to pronunciation: chiropod|ist,y have in recent years acquired a strange sh- pronunciation, as if they're from French. I still pronounce them with k, but I think I'm in the minority now. I've also heard this for chimaera and Chiron.

While trying to learn a bit of Russian, I came upon the word, "xaoc," which is "chaos" in English. Change form Cyrillic to Roman alphabet, and you've got exactly the same word, but Russian pronounces the "x" totally aspirately, so it's "haa-os," not "kay-os." So, is Russian closer to Greek, as I've presumed?

The Greek chi changed from a [kh] sound to the [x] sound of Russian some time after the Classical period. English gets its Greek words via (Classical) Latin generally, so uses the Latin [k] sound. Russian only came into serious contact with Greek later, so took in its words with the [x] sound.

quote:

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Originally posted by aput:
Same answer as for any Greek word with _ch_ in it. The _ch_ represents the Greek letter chi, which in classical times stood for an aspirated stop, phonetic symbol [kh]. This sound didn't occur in Latin, so when the Romans wrote Greek words they used the combination _ch_ to indicate that it was like Latin _c_ but with an aspiration _h_ added.

Educated Romans knew Greek and used the Greek sound, but the common people just rendered it as a familiar Latin _c_.

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What about ph for phi and th for theta? I thought I heard a similar story for phi, at least.

Yes, the Ancient Greek [kh] [ph] [th] sounds seem to have changed to their Modern Greek values [x] [f] [θ] (as in loch, photo, thermos) sometime around 100~200.