• The Assman
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    84 months ago

    saying the letter X doesn’t make either of the letter’s major phonetic sounds

    Excuse me?

    • @aeronmelon
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      184 months ago

      X, spoken as a letter = ecks

      Hard phonetic sound = zz, same as the letter Z (almost always at the beginning of a word. Xylophone)

      Soft phonetic sound = ksk (never at the beginning of a word. Box, oxen)

      (disclaimer: American English, ymmv.)

      • @oyfrog
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        84 months ago

        By this definition, Xolo wouldn’t fit because the x in Xolo is somewhere between sh- and ch-. It’s a Nahuatl word and many (if not all) Xs are sh-/ch-.

        Sorry for being pedantic.

        • @aeronmelon
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          34 months ago

          Don’t be sorry, you’re not pedantic enough.

          The Nahuatl word Xoloitzcuintle is something the vast majority of English-speaking Americans can’t read, let alone spell or pronounce correctly. So the more digestible word Xolo was adopted to identify Mexican hairless dogs (hard X, hard O, L, hard O).

          • @[email protected]
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            24 months ago

            As an English speaking American I can confirm. I started pronouncing it in my head then kinda gave up cus I haven’t had enough coffee yet

    • @[email protected]
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      4 months ago

      No, i think i get it but difficult to explain.

      Say X, X, X in a row

      Then say

      Xylo , Xen, Xono

      The Raw letter has different phonet-x to how it’s often applied.

      When were talking about teaching kids the alphabet we need to train both individual and applied letters

      I do realize that this might be very cultural and language dependent but i am pretty sure we’re talking plain english.

      • @[email protected]
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        64 months ago

        When were talking about teaching kids the alphabet we need to train both individual and applied letters

        This is only slightly related but I once met a young (USAmerican) adult who thought the stripy horse animal’s name was pronounced zed-bra in British English and it was really hard to convince her otherwise. In her mind zebra was strongly connected to Z-bra, so of course if someone was to pronounce the letter “zed” it would turn into “zed-bra” and not just into “zeh-bra”.