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25/02/2010

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trevor

I give you (drum roll) Hypo Real State

Ronnie

Do you think the English es- might be belt and braces, combining s from the Latin and the French e acute which replaces the Latin s in words like etat? st seems a bit of a mouthful after a consonant.

Peter Harvey

Thanks, Trevor, another example indeed but I would assume that the journalists who wrote that knew the English word 'state'. The number of Spaniards who have ever seen 'stablishment' used intentionally in English must be, well, pretty small!

Ronnie, The intrusive 'e' is found in Old French, 'especial, estate' and the accent marks the omitted 's', as you say. It seems that the two forms happened to develop separately in English with differing meanings

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