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The word school comes from the Greek σχολή. The letters are sigma, chi, omicron, lamda, eta. The Greek letter kappa always sounds like a hard k, as in English, but this Greek word does not contain kappa. Chi, the letter that looks like the English x, has a softer K sound, and sometimes sounds like ch. Often, English spellings were chosen to reflect the origin of the word when that was possible. To a large extent spelling is arbitrary, and has become fixed by custom in order to avoid confusion and ambiguity. So 'ch' was chosen to reflect the original Greek root, and if the root contained kappa instead of chi, then school would indeed be spelled skool! I guess we can be grateful that it isn't spelled sxool... The dictionaries of Samuel Johnson (1798) and Noah Webster (1828) were the beginnings of standardized spelling of standard American English.

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12y ago

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