this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
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Well, what other word do you use to teach a kid the alphabet? Xenophoe? Xenomorph?
X-TREME
Xenomorph, gotta teach them young that sometimes it's best to just nuke the whole thing from orbit.
Xanthan gum
Xenon? Xylem? Xenobiology? Xanthoma? Xylocarp? Xiphoid? Xerosis? Xyster? The scrabble favorites xi and xu?
There's loads of cool words that begin with x
Xylophone: fun, colorful, easy for a kid to remember as a cute little instrument
Xenon: An inert gas used in... MRI scans, I think?
X-ray is probably the only other 'X' word with more real-world representation than xylophone, and as pointed out above, that's not quite representative of how the letter is used phonetically in the rest of the language.
It's rarely used phonetically the same as xylophone. Usually it makes the [ks] sound, it only ever makes the [z] sound at the beginning of words. X-ray is actually much more in line with the typical phonetic representation in English.
Xylem is a mojor component of almost all the plants you see. I'm not sure how much more real-world representation you can get...
By "real-world representation", I mean "how often the word is actually used in the real world." There are hundreds of trillions of neutrinos passing through you all the time, but I'd still think "nest" is a better word for kids.
xenophobe
That way you can teach the concepts of bigotry and tolerance from a young age.
I don't know, a 5 year old might think that's a cool word and say they want to be xenophobe when they grow up.
Ok sure but I grew up in the 90s and ended up becoming a xylophone and Im not sure that's any better.
See, this way we can spot them earlier. Way too many of them go on to live their dream—when they could have had their course adjusted at the beginning.
Xolo - hairless Mexican dog
Xenops - small bird
(I don’t use X-Ray because saying the letter X doesn’t make either of the letter’s major phonetic sounds.)
Excuse me?
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.
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".
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.)
Or ex
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.
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).
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
And also its Xoloitzcuintle. A bit of a mouth full for a 6 year old. Also, like you said a nahuatl word and not English.
To be fair, most English words aren’t even really English
Most words used in normal, day-to-day conversations are English.
xoloitzcuintle is underrepresented though
X-ray? X, Professor? Xerox?