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Comment by andyferris | Hacker News Reader

Further abroad (Australia), Chile is a country and chili is the hot pepper, so I suspect the (English) language here is highly regional.

Eg I’ve even lived in North American and never come across that spelling for the pepper.

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The "chile" spelling is from Spanish, particularly Mexican and Central American Spanish. The word is derived from Nahuatl (Aztec).

That said, I'm in northern US and I would spell the pepper "chili"

And the name of the country Chile has no relation to the nahuatl word for pepper but comes from a word in a south American language (likely Aymara)

Oddly I associate `chile` with the pepper and `chili` with the stew. Curiously chili pepper seems to be the common spelling around where I live so I have no clue where I picked this up.

Yeah, I've lived in the northeast US my whole life and have never seen "Chile" used for anything but the country before; the pepper and the food are both spelled "chili" in my experience. That being said, pronouncing the country's name as a homophone of "chili" is a bit of an anglicism too, since from what I remember of Spanish in high school, the more accurate pronunciation would be something like "chee-lay" rather than "chill-ee". I wouldn't be shocked if both the spelling "chili" and the pronunciation of it had roots in the name of the country and in English usage drifted over time (sort of like the pronunciation of the name of the city "Amarillo" in Texas).

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