
X Is For... - amanuensis
https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/x-is-for/
======
cosmodisk
As a non native English speaker,I find letter X fascinating.My mother tongue
doesn't have it,unless math is involved.For many years I thought that
Xena,Xeon or even Xerox were pronounced with 'ks' rather than 'z'....

~~~
mysterydip
Just out of curiousity, would xerox essentially be spelled zeroks in your
native language, or something else?

~~~
andrew-v
In Polish the situation is similar. 'X' does not appear in the Polish
alphabet, but is understood as 'ks' (or 'ee-ks' when spelling). For example,
'xero' is pronounced 'kseh-roh' and sometimes written as 'ksero'. I guess it's
true for many languages with Latin origns/influences (but I'm not an expert).
So 'Xerox' would sound like 'kseroks'. And Windows XP sounds exactly
backwards: instead of 'eks pee' you have 'ee-ks peh'.

The letter 'X' was widely used in Polish language 100-200 years ago in
loanwords. Nowadays, you can't really see it anywhere, because the language
adapted, and the ortography of those words changed. So now you can even see
the pronunciation in the writing. A couple of English-Polish pairs of words in
writing as an example: \- maximum - maksimum \- xylophone - ksylofon \- text -
tekst

