X

Last updated

X
X x
Latin letter X.svg
Usage
Writing system Latin script
Type Alphabetic and logographic
Language of origin Latin language
Greek language
Sound values
In  Unicode U+0058, U+0078
Alphabetical position24
History
Development
Time period~−700 to present
Descendants
Sisters
Other
Associated graphs x(x)
Writing directionLeft-to-right
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.For the distinction between [ ], / / and  , see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

X, or x, is the twenty-fourth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ex (pronounced /ˈɛks/ ), plural exes. [2]

Contents

History

Western Greek
Chi
Etruscan
X
Latin
X
Greek Chi normal.svg EtruscanX-01.svg Capitalis monumentalis X.SVG

The letter X, representing /ks/, was inherited from the Etruscan alphabet. It perhaps originated in the Χ of the Euboean alphabet or another Western Greek alphabet, which also represented /ks/. Its relationship with the Χ of the Eastern Greek alphabets, which represented /kʰ/, is uncertain.

The pronunciation of /ks/ in the Romance languages underwent sound changes, with various outcomes:

In Old Spanish, x came to represent /ʃ/, which it still represents in most Iberian languages and in the orthographies of other languages influenced by Spanish, such as Nahuatl. In French (with a few exceptions), Italian, Romanian, and modern Spanish, x was replaced by other letters.

The use of x to represent /ks/ was reintroduced to the Romance languages via Latin loanwords. In many words, the /ks/ was voiced as /gz/.

Use in writing systems

Pronunciation of x by language
OrthographyPhonemesEnvironment
Asturian /ʃ/, /ks/
Afar /ɖ/
Albanian /dz/
Azeri /x/
Basque /ʃ/
Catalan /ʃ/Usually (word-initially, after consonants, i, au, or eu, in some surnames such as Rexach )
/gz/
/ks/
Standard Chinese (Pinyin)/ɕ/
Cou /ɨ/ ~ /ʉ/
Dutch /ks/Usually, mainly used in loanwords
/s/In Texel
English /ks/Usually; before an unstressed vowel
/gz/Before a stressed vowel
/z/Word-initially
/h/ Don Quixote , Oaxaca , and words derived from Classical Nahuatl/Nahuatl
Esperanto in digraphs only as a substitute for a diacriticcx, gx, hx, jx, sx, ux are used as substitutes for ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, ŭ where these characters are not available, see X-convention
French /ks/Usually; in Aix- (prefix or name of several places)
/gz/Mainly in the prefix ex- followed by a vowel; sometimes word-initially
Silent Word-finally with no liaison
/z/Word-finally with liaison; in sixième (6th) and dixième (10th)
/s/In six (6), dix (10), Auxerre , and Bruxelles (Brussels)
Galician /ʃ/Usually
/(k)s/Some learned loanwords
German /ks/Mainly used in loanwords
Indonesian /s/In the beginning of a word, mainly used in loanwords for science
/ks/In the middle or the end of a word, although words borrowed with the letter x in the middle or the end of a word are always replaced by the letters 'ks'. For example, the word 'maximum' and 'climax' in Indonesian would be 'maksimal' and 'klimaks'. Letter x on the middle or the end of a word only occurs in names. Mainly used in loanwords for science.
Italian /ks/Mainly used in learned loanwords
Kurdish /x/
Lao romanization/ɕ/
Leonese /ʃ/
Ligurian /ʒ/
Maltese /ʃ/
Mayan (ALMG)/ʃ/
Nahuatl /ʃ/
Nguni /ǁ/
Norwegian /ks/Archaic
Occitan /t͡s/Usually
/s/Before consonants
/ɡz/In the prefix ex- before vowels in the Provençal, Limousin, Auvergnat, Vivaro-Alpine, and Niçard dialects
/ɡʒ/Before i and u in the Auvergnat dialect
Oromo //
Pirahã /ʔ/
Polish /ks~gz/
Portuguese /ʃ/Usually, especially word-initially; in words derived from Tupi
/ks/Some words, mainly in learned loanwords
/s/When preceded by e and a consonant; some words
/z/In the prefix ex- before a vowel
/gz/In the prefix hexa-
Sardinian /ʒ/
Sicilian /ʃ/Old Sicilian words and names, e.g. Craxi and Giancaxio
/k(ə)s(ə)/Loanwords
Somali /ħ/
Spanish /(k)s/Usually
/s/Word-initially
/ʃ/, /t͡ʃ/, /x/In some names and words
Swedish /ks/
Uzbek /χ/
Venetian /z/Usually
/s/In Venexia, "Venice"
Vietnamese /s/

English

In English orthography, x is typically pronounced as the voiceless consonant cluster /ks/ when it follows the stressed vowel (e.g. ox), and the voiced consonant /ɡz/ when it precedes the stressed vowel (e.g. exam). It is also pronounced /ɡz/ when it precedes a silent h and a stressed vowel (e.g. exhaust). [3] Due to yod-coalescence, the sequence xi before a vowel can be pronounced /kʃ/ resulting from earlier /ksj/ , e.g. in -xion(-), -xious(-). Similarly, the sequence xu can be pronounced with /kʃ/ (e.g. flexure, sexual) or /ɡʒ/ (in luxury and its derivatives). Due to NG-coalescence, the sequence nx can be pronounced /ŋz/ in anxiety.

When x ends a word, it is always /ks/ (e.g. fax), except in loan words such as faux. When x does start a word, it is usually pronounced 'z' (e.g. xylophone, xanthan). When starting in some names or as its own representation, it is pronounced 'eks', in rare recent loanwords or foreign proper names, it can also be pronounced /s/ (e.g. the obsolete Vietnamese monetary unit xu ) or /ʃ/ (e.g. Chinese names starting with Xi, like Xiaomi or Xinjiang). Many of the words that start with x are of Greek origin, standardized trademarks ( Xerox ), or acronyms (XC).

In abbreviations, it can represent "trans-" (e.g. XMIT for transmit, XFER for transfer), "cross-" (e.g. X-ing for crossing, XREF for cross-reference), "Christ-" (e.g. Xmas for Christmas, Xian for Christian), the "crys-" in crystal (XTAL), "by" (SXSW for South by Southwest), or various words starting with "ex-" (e.g. XL for extra large, XOR for exclusive-or, or the extinction symbol).

X is the third least frequently used letter in English (after q and z), with a frequency of about 0.15% in words. [4] There are very few English words that start with x (the fewest of any letter).

Romance languages

In Latin, x stood for /ks/. In the Romance languages, as a result of assorted phonetic changes, x has other pronunciations:

Other languages

In languages which adopted the Latin alphabet later, x is used for various sounds, in some cases inspired by Latin or its descendants, but in others for unrelated consonants. Since the various Romance pronunciations of x can often be written in other ways, the letter becomes available for other sounds.

An illustrative example of x as a "leftover" letter is the differing usage in three different Cushitic languages:

Other systems

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, x represents a voiceless velar fricative.

Other uses

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

Other representations

Computing

Character information
PreviewXx
Unicode nameLATIN CAPITAL LETTER XLATIN SMALL LETTER XFULLWIDTH LATIN CAPITAL LETTER XFULLWIDTH LATIN SMALL LETTER X
Encodingsdecimalhexdechexdechexdechex
Unicode 88U+0058120U+007865336U+FF3865368U+FF58
UTF-8 885812078239 188 184EF BC B8239 189 152EF BD 98
Numeric character reference XXxxXXxx
EBCDIC family231E7167A7
ASCII [lower-alpha 1] 885812078

Other

See also

Notes

  1. Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">H</span> 8th letter of the Latin alphabet

H, or h, is the eighth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, including the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is aitch, or regionally haitch, plural haitches.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Y</span> Penultimate letter of the Latin alphabet

Y, or y, is the twenty-fifth and penultimate letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. According to some authorities, it is the sixth vowel letter of the English alphabet. Its name in English is wye, plural wyes.

Chi is the twenty-second letter of the Greek alphabet.

Finnish orthography is based on the Latin script, and uses an alphabet derived from the Swedish alphabet, officially comprising twenty-nine letters but also including two additional letters found in some loanwords. The Finnish orthography strives to represent all morphemes phonologically and, roughly speaking, the sound value of each letter tends to correspond with its value in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) – although some discrepancies do exist.

A caron is a diacritic mark commonly placed over certain letters in the orthography of some languages to indicate a change of the related letter's pronunciation.

A phonemic orthography is an orthography in which the graphemes correspond consistently to the language's phonemes, or more generally to the language's diaphonemes. Natural languages rarely have perfectly phonemic orthographies; a high degree of grapheme–phoneme correspondence can be expected in orthographies based on alphabetic writing systems, but they differ in how complete this correspondence is. English orthography, for example, is alphabetic but highly nonphonemic; it was once mostly phonemic during the Middle English stage, when the modern spellings originated, but spoken English changed rapidly while the orthography was much more stable, resulting in the modern nonphonemic situation. On the contrary the Albanian, Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Montenegrin, Romanian, Italian, Turkish, Spanish, Finnish, Czech, Latvian, Lithuanian, Esperanto, Korean, Swahili and Georgian orthographic systems come much closer to being consistent phonemic representations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polish alphabet</span> Script of the Polish language

The Polish alphabet is the script of the Polish language, the basis for the Polish system of orthography. It is based on the Latin alphabet but includes certain letters (9) with diacritics: the acute accent ; the overdot ; the tail or ogonek ; and the stroke. ⟨q⟩, ⟨v⟩, and ⟨x⟩, which are used only in foreign words, are usually absent from the Polish alphabet. However, before the standardization of Polish spelling, ⟨qu⟩ was sometimes used in place of ⟨kw⟩, and ⟨x⟩ in place of ⟨ks⟩.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digraph (orthography)</span> Pair of characters used to write one phoneme

A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used in the orthography of a language to write either a single phoneme, or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined.

Italian orthography uses the Latin alphabet to write the Italian language. This article focuses on the writing of Standard Italian, based historically on the Florentine variety of Tuscan.

Dutch orthography uses the Latin alphabet. The spelling system is issued by government decree and is compulsory for all government documentation and educational establishments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ch (digraph)</span> Latin-script digraph

Ch is a digraph in the Latin script. It is treated as a letter of its own in the Chamorro, Old Spanish, Czech, Slovak, Igbo, Uzbek, Quechua, Ladino, Guarani, Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Ukrainian, Japanese, Latynka, and Belarusian Łacinka alphabets. Formerly ch was also considered a separate letter for collation purposes in Modern Spanish, Vietnamese, and sometimes in Polish; now the digraph ch in these languages continues to be used, but it is considered as a sequence of letters and sorted as such.

Polish orthography is the system of writing the Polish language. The language is written using the Polish alphabet, which derives from the Latin alphabet, but includes some additional letters with diacritics. The orthography is mostly phonetic, or rather phonemic—the written letters correspond in a consistent manner to the sounds, or rather the phonemes, of spoken Polish. For detailed information about the system of phonemes, see Polish phonology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J</span> 10th letter of the Latin alphabet

J, or j, is the tenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its usual name in English is jay, with a now-uncommon variant jy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C</span> 3rd letter of the Latin alphabet

C, or c, is the third letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is cee, plural cees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Portuguese orthography</span> Alphabet and spelling

Portuguese orthography is based on the Latin alphabet and makes use of the acute accent, the circumflex accent, the grave accent, the tilde, and the cedilla to denote stress, vowel height, nasalization, and other sound changes. The diaeresis was abolished by the last Orthography Agreement. Accented letters and digraphs are not counted as separate characters for collation purposes.

In the Latin-based orthographies of many European languages, including English, a distinction between hard and soft ⟨c⟩ occurs in which ⟨c⟩ represents two distinct phonemes. The sound of a hard ⟨c⟩ often precedes the non-front vowels ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩ and ⟨u⟩, and is that of the voiceless velar stop,. The sound of a soft ⟨c⟩, typically before ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩ and ⟨y⟩, may be a fricative or affricate, depending on the language. In English, the sound of soft ⟨c⟩ is.

Hindustani is the lingua franca of northern India and Pakistan, and through its two standardized registers, Hindi and Urdu, a co-official language of India and co-official and national language of Pakistan respectively. Phonological differences between the two standards are minimal.

This article aims to describe the phonology and phonetics of central Luxembourgish, which is regarded as the emerging standard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dania transcription</span> Phonetic transcription

Dania is the traditional linguistic transcription system used in Denmark to describe the Danish language. It was invented by Danish linguist Otto Jespersen and published in 1890 in the Dania, Tidsskrift for folkemål og folkeminder magazine from which the system was named.

References

  1. as in the English word luxurious
  2. 1 2 "X", Oxford English Dictionary , 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "ex", op. cit.
  3. Venezky, Richard (1 January 1970). The Structure of English Orthography. The Hague: Walter de Gruyter. p. 40. ISBN   978-3-11-080447-8. Archived from the original on 27 April 2017. Retrieved 29 October 2016.
  4. Mička, Pavel. "Letter frequency (English)". Algoritmy.net. Archived from the original on 4 March 2021. Retrieved 9 February 2014.
  5. "Dizionario di ortografia e pronunzia" [Dictionary of Spelling and Pronunciation]. Dizionario di ortografia e pronunzia (in Italian). Archived from the original on 16 April 2018. Retrieved 9 February 2014.
  6. Gordon, Arthur E. (1983). Illustrated Introduction to Latin Epigraphy . University of California Press. p.  44. ISBN   9780520038981 . Retrieved 3 October 2015. roman numerals.
  7. King, David A. (2001). The Ciphers of the Monks. Franz Steiner Verlag. p. 282. ISBN   9783515076401. Archived from the original on 4 January 2021. Retrieved 22 November 2020. In the course of time, I, V and X became identical with three letters of the alphabet; originally, however, they bore no relation to these letters.
  8. Cajori, Florian (1928). A History of Mathematical Notations. Chicago: Open Court Publishing. p. 381. ISBN   9780486161167. Archived from the original on 13 April 2021. Retrieved 22 November 2020. See History of algebra.
  9. Holme, Ingrid (2008). "Hearing People's Own Stories". Science as Culture. 17 (3): 341–344. doi:10.1080/09505430802280784. S2CID   143528047.
  10. "New Zealand Passports - Information about Changing Sex / Gender Identity". Archived from the original on 23 September 2014. Retrieved 6 October 2014.
  11. "X marks the spot". Archived from the original on 4 June 2016. Retrieved 21 June 2016.
  12. "X: Mark of Collaboration - Issue No. 0053X - Arkitip, Inc". arkitip.com. Archived from the original on 17 May 2016. Retrieved 22 March 2016.
  13. Epstein, Nadine (7 October 2020). "A whole lot of history behind 'x' and 'o', kiss and hug". The Washington Post . Archived from the original on 1 April 2018. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
  14. "X, n." OED Online (Oxford: Oxford University Press, September 2022), §6. Accessed 11 November 2022.
  15. "'찐따', 'X랄하다'...욕도 전통을 가진다?" ['loser', 'fXing'... swear words also have a tradition?]. www.goeonair.com (in Korean). Archived from the original on 18 January 2024. Retrieved 22 August 2023.
  16. 참바다 (15 January 2021). 시사칼럼 우리 시대의 상징과 은유 (in Korean). e퍼플. ISBN   979-11-6569-712-9.
  17. Constable, Peter (19 April 2004). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 11 October 2017. Retrieved 24 March 2018.
  18. Everson, Michael; Dicklberger, Alois; Pentzlin, Karl; Wandl-Vogt, Eveline (2 June 2011). "L2/11-202: Revised proposal to encode "Teuthonista" phonetic characters in the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 11 October 2017. Retrieved 24 March 2018.
  19. Anderson, Deborah; Everson, Michael (7 June 2004). "L2/04-191: Proposal to encode six Indo-Europeanist phonetic characters in the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 11 October 2017. Retrieved 24 March 2018.