Wasn’t actually today, but it’s an interesting etymology. Old Arabian speaks “majus” because they lack a hard G sound, similar to Japanese lacking L sound

Also, for anyone interested, that means that the Magi who came to Jesus’ birth with gifts were Zoroastrian priests

  • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    Ah, my bad there, I though you were implying that the reason why the English word has a soft G is because Arabic doesn’t have a hard G sound. Those are actually independent developments. Arabic actually used to have a standard hard G sound (and in Egypt it still does!), but it shifted to the J sound at some point (wanna say vaguely Middle Ages?).