Junta (terminology)

:"This is about the word "junta". For its various uses, see junta (disambiguation)."
Words spelled junta appear in several European languages. The closely related Spanish and Portuguese words "junta" mean committee. The Spanish one is pronounced 'hoonta'; the Portuguese 'zhoonta' (with "zh" representing the sound of "s" in "measure" or of the second "g" in "garage"). They both evolved from the Latin "juncta", the feminine past participle of "jungere", to join.

The English word derives from the Spanish one, dating back to 1623. Depending on the perceived origin of the wordFact|date=May 2008 (Spanish or Italian), the range of accepted pronunciations include ˈhu̇n-təˈ, jən' təˈ, hən' təˈ, ju̇n-tə.

(Indian English has a word "junta", apparently a false cognate of the mutually closely analogous Romance-language ones (including "junte" in French and "giunta" in Italian). This Hindi-derived word, from जनता, meaning "(the) people" and pronounced jən'tɑ:, formally refers to the common people, and colloquially means "a group of people".)