this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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I’m sorry, what? Can you give some examples in Spanish where the letter x makes a sh sound?
I don’t speak Spanish (helpful eh?) but I remember when I was in Mexico I went to a cool place called Xel-Há, which was pronounced shell-ha. So there’s one.
I don't think that's Spanish. Nahuatl, which is an indigenous language spoken in Mexico, does use x- to transcribe the sound commonly written as sh- in English, so that's probably a Nahuatl place-name.
In the case of Xitter, though, the reference is generally to Mandarin Chinese, which uses x- to transcribe one of the two or three distinct sounds in that language that all sound like sh- to Anglophones.
That makes sense, thanks for teaching me something today :)