X Is The Least & Most Important Letter
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SOURCES & FURTHER READING
Origin Of X: www.dictionary.com/e/letter-x/
Chalcidian: bristolgreeks.com/index.php/n...
A Brief History Of X: www.smithsonianmag.com/histor...
Why X Could Be The Most Powerful Letter: www.bbc.com/culture/article/2...
X & O: www.washingtonpost.com/lifest...
Roman Numeral Origins: www.encyclopedia.com/science/...
Why We Use X In Maths: gizmodo.com/why-we-use-x-as-t...
Why X Means Kiss: www.todayifoundout.com/index....
History Of X-Rating: www.vulture.com/2018/12/a-bri...
X Pronunciation In Spanish: www.thoughtco.com/pronouncing...
X Pronunciation In Chinese: www.omeidachinese.com/chinese...
This whole video was a ploy to get you to follow me on Threads. www.threads.net/@nameexplainyt
X > Threads
Another food misnomer I found was "Figy pudding" as I feel like it's more of a cake than a type of pudding
Hi.
Hi.
Slight error, you had + instead of x in the "maths problem"...
Excuse but the letter is actually pronounced “The artist formerly known as Twitter.”
TAFKAT
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Elongated Muskrat does not approve.
excuse me*, the social media site*
Thanks for the comedi
When missionaries developed a writing system for indigenous African languages in South Africa, they chose x, c and q for the different types of clicking sounds, as the normal sounds those letters make can all be represented by other letters.
Makes perfect sense to me.
Well that's subjective. In English, S can sometimes make a [z] sound too in words like phrases so using S instead of C may not work. Besides, English and those languages are so unrelated.
Besides in some cases of Zulu, K can sometimes make a sound, very close to /g/ and in Xhosa, it is either silent in nkc, nkq or nkx or makes the /k'/ sound which is k with elective
In Portuguese, x can have 4 different sounds: “ks”, “z”, “s”, or “sh” depending on the word
you forgot one, the no sound
@@ThePaulistawhen that happens?
Latin American Spanish is similar in that. They use x to handle unfamiliar sounds in loan words from indigenous languages, especially in Mexico.
Seems the same in English
St. Andrew was crucified on an X shaped cross, which is where the Scottish flag got it's symbolism from.
...plus la Cruz de San Andrea, which was the symbol for the Nationalist side in the Spanish Civil War, featured as rudder markings for the Nationalist Air Force. Although in that case it was black on white, not white on blue.
Yes and also from the old Spanish flag and the flag of Burgundy.
Multiple Xs also make me think of Castlemaine beer & Trebor extra strong mints. Or indeed, Scott Pilgrim.
The 'x' sound in the languages of Spain is all over the place. Historically it could make an aspirate 'h' sound, as in Quixote or México - but in Basque it usually follows T to make a 'ch' sound, in Catalan it can make that sound alone and in Galician the 'sh' sound persists.
Well, in spanish we have on how to pronounce the x if its at the beginning of the word or in-between and some more.
The tricky one are the Mexicans.
Those are arbitrary.
Interesting, hugs and kisses are the opposite letters where I grew up: lips were the circles of O and arms crossing behind someone in a hug were X
That’s what I used to think, but everyone else here uses x for kisses and o for hugs, now I know I was half right.
I think the O came from tic-tac-toe, and people just assumed that O was the other thing that goes with X. (It also shows up in football play diagrams.)
Yeah I crossed over from that same universe too! However, it was always Berenstein Bears ;)
In Chinese (and Japanese) characters, X also represents 10! But the cross is horizontal, not diagonal - '十'. Since their character for 1 is '一', if they used a decimal system, then it makes sense to represent 10 with a bar through the character for 1.
But that's all quite old fashioned - in modern Chinese and Japanese, Roman-style numbers are often used. In a fancy restaurant, you may see characters used, but in a fast food joint, Roman numbers are also used.
so X doesn't represent 10 (as in Roman numerals), t represents 10.
@@laser8389
I mean a cross represents ten in the Roman system *and* the Chinese system - but in the Roman system the cross is diagonal, and in the Chinese system the cross is horizontal.
I'm not sure where 't' comes into it. Unless you mean the cross stroke in the Chinese character is not quite in the middle, but a bit higher?
@@ZachariahJ I mean, as you said, that the two lines are vertical and horizontal, t is just the closest character I have on my keyboard. Orientation-wise it’s closer than X.
@@laser8389.
AND "拾", the unmodifiable letter of Ten, is similar as Phoenician Samekh(?)!
Personally I like the letter X for its versatility. It's like we set the rules aside for this one letter.
How do you pronounce the x? Well, however you're intended to in that specific instance.
X
English - eks
Polish - eeks
That's not true. The real reason why it's called an x-ray is that Roentgen didn't know what to call his discovery at the time, so he put x as a place holder until he came up with a name. He eventually came up with a name which was in his native German Röntgenaufnahme, or Roentgen's recorder, which is the modern German name for x-ray. The English-speaking world was just never notified that x-ray was a placeholder. Thus, we English speakers got stuck with the placeholder
Better than being stuck with Röntgenaufnahme
@@sydhenderson6753 we could have translated it into English, so it would be Roentgen's recorder
Yeah no. The English and Germs are lying. If you look at the great pyramid from aerial view you'll see the X symbol.
Was meant to show the gods we deciphered their message. Chi Rho is the Christogram for Christ while Cairo is the capital of Egypt. Both are pronounced exactly the same because X means Christ. Don't let the keepers of the ole mysteries tell you they're not related when we're reading both in English. Why is Christ X and X is 10? Because 1 represents man and the 0 represents the woman. You need the two as 1 and to find X where X marks the spot in the middle or center at Golgotha.
In greek, x is used way more often at the start of words (anywhere in a word in general). By the way, in greek the character that represents the 'ks' sound is this ξ, and not this character χ, which makes a different sound.
Is that in modern Greek or ancient Greek you're talking about? Ancient Greek and modern Greek are not the same.
@@ryla22 modern
it makes h sound
how to pronounce X in English:
- ks (like in box)
- eks (like in x-ray)
- z (like in xylophone)
- gz (like in example)
- gzh (like in luxurious)
- ksh (like in complexion)
yeah, English ain’t confusing whatsoever lol
it makes so much sound in english to still ended up to being one the the rarest letter
It should just always sound like SH So that's my though tho
In Mexico the X is pronounced as a spanish J, which is similar to the english H sound
In Castillian yes, but spanish form Mexico have some influence from indigenous languages that makes this more confusing.
In Xochimilco it's pronounced "s", Uxmal it's pronounced "ks", Xola it's pronounced "sh".
so I guess only in Oaxaca the x sounds like I said @@keviniga4864
@@keviniga4864In xilófono is pronounced as an S too, in Máximo is pronounced as "ks" in Ximena is pronounced as an "h"
The only letter in Spanish that makes no sense
X is important when it comes in 3.
Omne Trium Perfectum
🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨
Exactly. How else would you represent the number thirty as an ancient Roman citizen?
Huh huh...huh huh...
@4:00 2+8=10.
There is no X in Mandarin, only in the Romanization of the language.
Jesus would have likely been crucified on a "T" or "X", but not a "t" as is usually depicted.
But his apostle by the name of Peter was crucified upside down.
In a play I was in many years ago, a certain character (not the one I played) played the xylophone. The play's director pronounced it "ex-eye-lo-phone" rather than "zy-lo-phone". Drove us all nuts.
he should get fired
He must be Greek or something 😂
I say Gzeyeluhfone
In Polish; ksylofon (xylophone) is pronounced "ksy-loh-fohn" Y in Polish is similarly pronounced the i-sound in pick.
@@modmaker7617 Dziękuję Bogu za Polaków 😂
There is a beer from Queensland Australia called XXXX. It is said that it was named because Queenslanders did not how to spell "beer".
Then there is the top right X to close a program and shorthand for "exit", room or intimate partner. And the social media platform owned by a certain well known self promoter.
X sounds(in portuguese):
/ks/ in "anexo"
/z/ in "exercer"
/s/ in "sexta"
/ʃ/* in "caixa"
/ /** in "excelente"
*means "ch" or "sh"
** means no sound
Iirc the there is a symbol to represent silent letters
@@cycrothelargeplanet i mean i dont know what it is but i could serch for that
Very thorough, but with one omission. X is often used as the initial for words starting with "ex~", such as "x sports" for "extreme sports", and often replaces "ex~" altogether, like with "xtra creamy".
Brilliant. Well done as usual.
The weirdest letter for "not really being needed" is Q. Which was already needed when it was adopted in to the Latin alphabet, and has hung around ever since, for some reason.
Q is another letter which can be represented by other letters. Usually it sounds as 'cw/kw' [as in queen, quick, quiet, quill] except in loan words from French and Italian when it sounds as a hard C or a K.
I like the letter "X" in language just because it is used so rarely.
4:04 Ah yes, my favourite operation, rotated multiplication
iPhone X was never a breakaway from numbers, but a stylistically chosen roman numeral, officially pronounced ‘i-phone ten’. Likewise, OSX was always officially pronounced ‘o ess ten’ (short for (Mac(intosh)) Operating System Ten). That didn’t stop many people from calling both ‘eks’ though.
The letter X was *everywhere* in the 90s, because of the marketing toward Generation X (which was named because the sociologists commenting on the generation to come after the Baby Boomers didn't know what else to call it) decided that this would be the "extreme" generation. The X became retroactively an abbreviation for "Xtreme." Thus, we got the X-Games, the XFL, Xtreme Ghostbusters, X's on cans of Mt. Dew, Pepsi promoting itself as for "Generation-NeXt" (a variant on their previous slogan, "the choice of a new generation"), and all sorts of other extreme, danger-loving, hyper-athletic, active lifestyle aesthetics that was supposed to define a generation, despite the fact that most of us were, in actuality, sitting on the couch watching TV or playing video games.
Elon still thinks it's the 90s.
But his aerospace company also named as X
7:42 It must be noted that both the x in iPhone X and macOSX is just ten in roman numeral, so they should be pronunced as iphone ten and macOS ten. In fact iphobeX was the successor to the iphone 9 and preceded iphone 11. Same for osX except that now its called simply macOS
In Queensland they have XXXX (four ex) beer. The rest of us Aussies joke that it's called that because Banana Benders (Queenslanders) can't spell "beer".
I'm guessing X in Roman numerals come in the form of showing numbers through hand signs from a distance. As you've mentioned ten is formed from 2 fives, so showing the hands out as two palms to represent 10 might eventually be shown as two hands in a crossed manner.
4:08 You wrote plus, not times, on the slide. So the unknown thing is 8. You spoke "2 unknown things" which matches our symbolic use of juxtaposition (no symbol) to imply multiplication. That's what your slide should have shown.
5:33 They might've came from the Etruscan tally system, which used a line for 1, cross for 10 cross with a vertical bar through it for 100, a circle with a cross in it for 1,000, & halved them for 5, 50 & 500. 5 and 50 were the lower half of the symbols and 500 was the bottom-right half
Interesting! I could see that …
So now the letter ex xould(*should) start with words that start with the sound (sh) like
Ship Xip
Shape Xape
Shake Xake
You see what I mean ?
Polish doesn't use officially X but Poles will unofficially use the letter to replace the KS digraph which is very common in Polish.
Same with Finnish, but here it's called as "teini-x" meaning "teenager-x" because the common attitude is that only teenagers and other immature people write like that.
@@oh2mp
That's very interesting
X doesn't exist in the Irish alphabet. Along with j, k, q, v, w, y, and z. So when you see a name like Siobhán, the bh is essentially a v.
As for the 'ks' sound in X, Irish words very rarely hit that particular sound. It's often a softer 'chs' sound, being more throaty and phlegmmy (that's the best word I can think of), akin to the Hebrew ch in 'chanukah'.
In Irish, X is Cs
Ex: Taxi > Tacsaí
K, Q and Y don't exist either since they represent sounds that can be made by other letters
i always saw xoxo like x = pursed lips in a kiss, and o = arms around someone in a hug
X has a few other sounds just like Old English
At 6:16
"Sign your X on the line...."
Must be a British thing!! In the US, we say something to the effect of, "sign your name on the line by the X"....there it's really no particular way of saying it....
As for the association of X with science fiction and technology, I always thought it had to do with the letter being commonly used to denotate experimental designs such as the Bell X-1 or X-15 rocket planes, thus leading to the letter being associated with the cutting edge of technology.
In regards to kissing, it works out quite nicely in English that the phoneme for X (KS) sounds a lot like the very word kiss.
If 2+x= 10
Then, x = 5 😂
yeah, what he _said_ made sense, but what was shown didn't match
The correct answer to the math equation at 4:04 is 8, not 5.
X can be the kheo equivalent in bangla. Kheo is a letter that isnt really a letter but a combination of the letters that make the k and sh sound. But that combination appears so many times in our language that the juktakkkhor (combined letter) in itself is considered as an honorary letter. Even though it really isnt and you could acheive the same sound by writting k and sh together anyway.
K = ক / sh = ষ and kheo = ক্ষ
(Kheo isnt actually on the keyboard, you have to type ksh together to find it in a suggested word lol)
As in names like Dixit and Laxmi? I don't know if those are Bangla names or not, but I have seen those names spelled with both "X" and "ksh", like you're describing, and pronounced with a "ksh" sound
@@aaronodonoghue1791 those arent. But Laxmi is called Lokkhi in bangla so your coorelation is right. Btw Good on you for realising bangla is an indian language. Coz Dixit is a marathi surname and Laxmi is a hindi word.
Perhaps you omitted to mention, in terms of 'that certain something', the talent show, 'X Factor'.
It's strange that I've just been tracking down some vinyl from Bulgaria in conjunction with my 'Girls Of The Golden East' music Blog, as my name in Bulgarian begins with an 'X', as in Христо, pointing up that connection between the Greek and Cyrillic Alphabets.
As I'm from a certain sporting generation, continuing the Balkan theme, I'll forever remember the 'X-Certificate Tennis' we got from the player that shares my birthday, Ilie Năstase and 'Buster' Mottram versus John McEnroe and Peter Fleming, where one of the players (Fleming) looked like something out of one of those Nazi propaganda films of Leni Riefenstahl, in his long, white trousers while Mottram actually was a real-live Neo-Nazi, as a National Front member. Strange that he played alongside a player from the then Communist world.
If X Factor is next to Fear Factor, does X = Fear where the 2 F actors walk out to an unknown place together?
@@trien30 Was that space between 'F' and 'actors' intentional? In other words, did you mean to say '2 F actors' or '2 Factors'?
It also makes a “gz” sound in “Exempt”
0:25 */x/
Samekh is read with a "ḫ", not a "k".
Yes, but /x/ is (mostly) not used in English, so not all speakers would be familiar with it, and /k/, while not the same sound by any means, is the closest sound in standard English to it (though I would argue /h/ is a strong contender for closest to /x/ too)
@@aaronodonoghue1791True but this channel is not just about English! Plus at least he could pronunce it as a /h/ too. Like you said, it's similar to /x/ and in my opinion it's more similar to /x/ than /k/.
Fear not! In german X always makes the "KS" sound, even in words like Xylophone (can be a mouthful)
What's the difference between x and nc-17?
Saturday Night Fever was an X film apparently. When The Goodies parodied it Bill (or Graeme) asks Tim if he's seen it to which he replies "Certainly not. It's an X film, I might get scared".
I thought the reason X meant "kisses" is because it makes the "ks" sound, which is just the word "kiss" minus the vowel.
Im surprised you didn't mention xxx for moonshine and 30x distilled
I always thought X is used for 10 because of tally marks...|||| crossed with a diagonal line. (today it's most associated with prisoners counting on the wall) Two diagonal lines would equal 10.
According to Wikipedia this system might date back to prehistoric times.
X, our favourite algebralien, is very important
I pronounce X as Twitter
I was taught X was hugs and O was kisses, it makes a lot more sense... X looks like crossed arms and O looks like a mouth.
thanks to the Flying Hellfish episode I learnt that you can use the letter X as an alternative to writing your signature.
I like how you tried to reintrepret the X symbol
Gz sound in English too. Exactly
Only 7 1/2 more weeks until X-mas.
4:05 💀💀💀
It is 2 Vs of 2 hands together
I maintain that if we had some spelling reform for English, we could give the superfluous letters some better reason to be there. X, since it's commonly associated in other languages as at least close to "sh", could just become that. C could be changed to represent the "ch" sound (though, since "ch" is really a combination of "t" and "sh", that would be an interesting circumstance, to say the least). This brings us to Q, which would be harder to figure out. We already have K, and QU could easily just turn to KW. "Zh" and both versions of "th" don't have letters associated with them anymore. However, we rarely even use "zh" (usually combined with "d" for the J sound), which would make one think it could be a "th", but neither of those are anywhere near being associated with Q. I mean, when it comes to English, Q does seem like the true least important letter (though I understand completely that when Romanizing other languages' spelling, it is quite important).
Actually I would argue that, C is important in words like rices, acid and democracy. See, in English soft C is constant, always [s]. However pronounciation of S varies. In some cases of English S can sound like a Z. Example:
Vases vs Rises
Basic vs Exquisite
Asynchronous vs Easy
As you see, in some cases, S can be either s or z and there is no fixed rule. So if we replaced c in rices with s, it would not make sense since two words would have the same spelling with different pronounciations. And we won't even predict if S will really sound like an s. It could sound like z. Rices is the worst case of replacing C with S
Think to yourself, if we replaced soft C with S in all cases, will S always sound like [s]? The answer is we don't know. See, compare the words "resolution", "esophagus", "vase" and "lase"? Are all "s" pronounced [s]? The answer is no. You see, there isn't even a consistent rule on how to proonounce "S" as either [z] or "s"? And there are exceptions too like "pleasure" where it is not pronounced "s" or "z" but rather "zh" like the French J. In Sure, it is pronounced Sh. You see, S has 4 different readings and there are bunch of ecxceptions on how to pronounce them. Compare this to the Th digraph which either makes the voiceless th sound in words like "thing" or "pathetic" but also the voiced th sound in words like "father" or "then". You see, there is no rule on how to pronounce Th either. So just like the digraph "Th" in English, there is no rule on how to pronounce the S's and its just a custom.
x is only important for x burger
2+5=10 I think you meant to use a multiplication symbol hehe.
So is CGP Gray a patron or just another Tim?
i always thought "xxx" was so because its for censorship, as in, "to make it unknown/covered" because theyre showing things that they might want to censor, like in front of children for example. this guess also extends to kisses because children are also expected to cover their eyes in front of mouth to mouth kisses.
Xtremely interesting
The "x" in Chinese was added by the communists when they re-invented their alphabet used for transliteration (when Peking became Beijing). They also changed many chinese characters (words) to more simple forms.
4 minutes into the video you did addition instead multiple which means you stated that 2+5=10
4:04
you might wanna check your maths
I am Mr. Lego
I used to think the prefix ex as in former was spelled with just one letter but it's actually spelled E X I'm like What's the point
Bender: Blackmail is such an ugly word. I prefer extortion. The "x" makes it sound cool.
Groundbreaking discover (conjecture): X is ten because it's two Vs
What about the word hamburger? Is it just a combination of ham and burger, or is it from the demonym of Hamburg? And if so, did we derive the word ham, the word burger, or both from German?
Burg is just the German word for city or castle. I'm not sure where Ham comes from, but Hamburger derives from the immigrant Germans from there to the United States whose names became synonymous with the meat patties they made. It's just a coincidence that 'Ham' was already a word for meat in English. Now we have cheeseburgers and burgers too.
I'm pretty sure our own ham is unrelated to the one in Hamburg, but don't quote me on that
Keep the X is Xmas!
In Welsh, there is no X. It is written cs. Letters K, Q, V and Z have also been excluded since sounds they make can be made by other letters.
V sound like no other letter tho so idk why welsh remove it
@@zidane8452 F makes the same sound, for f sound, you write Ff
@@jamburga321 hmm ok, never knew
@@zidane8452 There is no Z eithr because, there is no Z sound so S is used instead
O is used for hug because when you hug someone you make a O with your arms. X for kiss because when you say kiss it kind of sounds like your saying ex
Highest rating. Not lowest rating. Its telling you X is the highest. Put the X on top of your head and find the very center. What you're going to find at the center of your brain is the Pineal gland. Well guess what? Thats also where you'll find Golgotha.
Chi came from the Phoenician letter T not Samekh which is S.
Generation X.
@LuDa-lf1xd In Catalan in most cases the x used for the sh sound, like in xampany (champagne). The sound can also be spelled as ix, like in dibuix (drawing).
I'm not familiar enough with Castilian to know of any examples of words where x is pronounced like sh in that language.
XXXX is also a beer
I’m afraid you’re wrong with the examples from Apple, the iPhone X used X in the name, but was always referred to as ten (by Apple at least). The same goes for macOS X.
How come the English language has two letters as well as a diagram that make the same sound that being c k and ch. To a lesser extent q and x. The English language really likes the k sound
X is important when its roman numerals
As a Spanish native speaker i wouldn't say x makes an "sh" sound at the starts of words. It's more like a "z" or "s" sound.
Spanish has many varieties across Europe, America, and the world though. It's probably incorrect to generalize nearly anything to the entirety of the Spanish language
There also gen x
4:07 + instead of X or *
2 + 5 = 10
1:45
Actually, X is worth 10 points in Scrabble, alongside K, W, Y, and Z.
Depends on the language. You must be using the French version. In the English language Scrabble, Q and Z are worth 10, J and X are worth 8, K is worth 5.
@@keviniga4864 The rules in Canada are not the same as those in the United States when it comes to Scrabble, because both countries don't speak the same language, with Canada speaking French and the United States speaking English.
we talking about english not other langugues so x is worth 8 in the english scarbble
@@zidane8452 X may be worth 8 points in the United States, but in neighboring Canada, X is actually worth 10 points.
@@candyneige6609 yall scarbble dictionary different? never knew
2+5=10, Stonks ∆
|
Ha! More facts to annoy my friends with
X isn't used in Finnish at all except in foreign words eg. brand names. We use just "KS".
X❤x
In properly correct Italian language x is written "cs".
Taxi is "tacsi", as an example.
X marks the spot.
x should just be the ch or kh sound
Xhosa, Zulu and african languages with clicks: are we joke to you?
Maffs
When hunting for treasure, X marks the spot. Arrrrrgh!
"X" looks really weird with serifs
that is all