There are certain sets of consonants that give away their language roots, even when you find them in English or maybe French and so on. Not talking here about combinations which pick up groups from two separate words run together.

STR, SPR, STL, SPL, SCHTR, SCHTL, SCHP, SCHPR, SCHPL, and some others that I don't recall right now, come to us from the Teutonic languages (like German), almost always. (I was being careful, there, to say "almost", so as not to get shot down if there were found to be an exception, which I don't expect to happen.)

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For what it's worth, one of my favorite multiple-consonant words is from Greek: "phthisis". My guess is that "phth", wherever found, is from Greek.


Dave Oesterreich