Comment on "United States" in French (États-Unis) would have made a very confusing acronym

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pedz@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

If you want to be serious, the word state and état are both coming from an older version of French when it was written estat. French replaced ES with É because it wasn’t pronouncing the S, while English dropped the E and kept pronouncing the S. It happened to multiple words, although some also come from Latin.

Étrange - Strange. Époux - Spouse. École - School. Épice - Spice. Éponge - Sponge.

It also happened with circumflex.

Hôpital - Hospital. Forêt - Forest. Pâte - Paste.

Here’s a whole video about exactly this.

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