• @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”.