The medieval Arabs probably pronounced the last h in shāh harder and more forcefully than how shah is pronounced in English or in today's Arabic.[16][17] The word is in 11th century Catalan-Latin as escac, then 12th century French as eschac, giving rise to 12th century French eschec,[10] which the English "check" derives from. . The "mate" in checkmate is from the medieval Arabic chess term شاه مات shāh māt = "king dies".[18] This too arrived in English through French, starting in French as mat in the 12th century.[10] Italian has scaco mato = "checkmate" in the 12th century.[19] . The English word chess arrived from medieval French esches | eschas = "chess" which was the grammatical plural of eschec | eschac = "check".[20] 11th century Catalan-Latin has grammatical plural escachs = "chess" from grammatical singular escac = "check".[21]