• slazer2au
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    356 months ago

    Well, what other word do you use to teach a kid the alphabet? Xenophoe? Xenomorph?

      • @Siethron@lemmy.world
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        196 months ago

        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.

        • @Zachariah@lemmy.world
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          106 months ago

          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.

        • idunnololz
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          66 months ago

          Ok sure but I grew up in the 90s and ended up becoming a xylophone and Im not sure that’s any better.

    • @aeronmelon@lemmy.world
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      166 months ago

      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.)

      • The Assman
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        86 months ago

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

        Excuse me?

        • @aeronmelon@lemmy.world
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          186 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.)

        • @webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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          6 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.

          • @Mirodir@discuss.tchncs.de
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            66 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”.

    • @gnutrino@programming.dev
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      56 months ago

      Xenon? Xylem? Xenobiology? Xanthoma? Xylocarp? Xiphoid? Xerosis? Xyster? The scrabble favorites xi and xu?

      There’s loads of cool words that begin with x

      • TheTechnician27
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        6 months ago

        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.

        • @gnutrino@programming.dev
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          6 months ago

          Xylem is a major component of almost all the plants you see. I’m not sure how much more real-world representation you can get…

          • TheTechnician27
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            6 months ago

            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.

        • 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.