• Kraven_the_Hunter@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    To the Mayan people X makes a ‘sh’ sound. That’s the way I pronounce it. Now and forever.

    Xitter, I mean Shitter. I still pronounce the letter X normally.

    • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      9 months ago

      In Portuguese, too. And most other languages from Iberia*. And “x” is typically so rare in other orthographies that, for Portuguese speakers, rendering “x” as /ʃ/ (the “sh” sound) is almost automatic, so the first time that I saw “Xitter” I couldn’t stop laughing.

      *with one exception: modern Spanish. And by “modern” I mean past the 17th century, because before that it was /ʃ/ in Spanish too. That’s where the Maya languages got that spelling convention from.

      (Sorry for the off-topic.)