Tuesday, April 28, 2015

A-to-Z Challenge: X

X is the hardest letter to come up with a word for, which is why I think we should make it the “ch” sound. This challenge would be a lot easier, then. So what did I come up with for this year?

X. That’s it. The letter X. I literally started planning this a year ago so my recurring Secret Origins series would have the letter X fall in April. All for the Challenge. Or Xallenge.



Anyone? Anyone at all?

Oh, nuts to you guys.

The alphabet gif I always refer to doesn’t have much for X. Etruscan, the language we got our alphabet from, has kind of a Y with an extra line in the middle that they used for the “ks” sound, and then before that there’s the Greek chi, which is just an X. It’s not that surprising that the history of X ends with Greek, who used it for a hard kh sound. Now, the Greeks got the alphabet from the Phoenicians, who didn’t have an X (they did have a similar symbol in their history, but it was what turned into our T). So basically, X was invented by the Greeks because they liked to use different consonants for different vowel sounds.

Sources
Alphabet.gif
Omniglot
Ancient Scripts
Mysterious Etruscan
Phoenician.org
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10 comments:

  1. Tasha Duncan-DrakeApril 28, 2015 at 4:59 AM

    Nice choice - so we can blame the Greeks on why this day is so hard for the AtoZ :)
    Tasha
    Tasha's Thinkings | Wittegen Press | FB3X (AC)

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousApril 28, 2015 at 6:09 AM

    Cool. I didn't know X was a Greek invention.

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  3. Alex J. CavanaughApril 28, 2015 at 6:30 AM

    Before that, it was only a mark on a treasure map...

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  4. Andrew LeonApril 28, 2015 at 8:55 AM

    X is a great letter but a useless sound.

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  5. Chrys FeyApril 28, 2015 at 10:14 AM

    I didn't know where X came from, so this was cool. :)

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  6. S. L. HennessyApril 28, 2015 at 11:04 AM

    The Greeks invented X? Wow, that's so cool.

    Good luck with the A to Z Challenge!
    A to Z Co-Host S. L. Hennessy
    http://pensuasion.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  7. William KendallApril 28, 2015 at 4:32 PM

    Those pesky Greeks!

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  8. Liz A.April 28, 2015 at 9:35 PM

    Well, it's useful for algebra...

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  9. bettyApril 28, 2015 at 9:51 PM

    I did use something interesting with the letter X with it coming from the Greeks. I do like Xallenge :) X is a very hard word for the challenge; I struggled in years past what to do with it but got lucky with moving to Arizona with xeriscape this year :)

    betty

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  10. Nick WilfordApril 29, 2015 at 12:07 AM

    I wonder why there are so many words beginning with X where it's pronounced Z, why not just make it a Z. Were they trying to give X something to do?

    ReplyDelete

Please validate me.

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