Episode 153: Zombie Letters
The History of English Podcast
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The History of the Romans and Greeks
The ancient greeks had two p sounds, one that was a regular p sound and one that was heavily aspirated. When the romans borrowed words from greek with that sound, they just pronounced it as an f sound,. That's why later lon words like chorus and chrome are spelled with a c h rather than a simple c or k. The same process also gave us the modern p h spelling for the f sound.
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