I do prefer pronouncing axolotl phonetically to rhyme with Aristotle.
But I guess this kinda makes me curious about the Nahuatl language, why would they use the roman alphabet if they’re just gonna change the pronunciation of every letter into some unrelated nonsense 😵💫
They didn’t use the Roman alphabet. They used hieroglyphs. The Spanish were the ones who came up with that spelling.
Now, why did the Spanish decide that X should make a “sh” sound? I don’t know, but I can guess. I don’t think that the “sh” sound is present in Spanish, so they decided to use a letter that they didn’t use much (or at all) to represent it: X. But in English, X inside of a word makes a “ks” sound, so when the word was read by English speakers, they said “acks-oh-lawtl”.
I just pulled that out of my ass, though.
ETA: Okay, did a little research. It looks like the letter X is used in Spanish, and it used to have a “sh” sound, but it changed over time.
I do prefer pronouncing axolotl phonetically to rhyme with Aristotle.
But I guess this kinda makes me curious about the Nahuatl language, why would they use the roman alphabet if they’re just gonna change the pronunciation of every letter into some unrelated nonsense 😵💫
They didn’t use the Roman alphabet. They used hieroglyphs. The Spanish were the ones who came up with that spelling.
Now, why did the Spanish decide that X should make a “sh” sound? I don’t know, but I can guess. I don’t think that the “sh” sound is present in Spanish, so they decided to use a letter that they didn’t use much (or at all) to represent it: X. But in English, X inside of a word makes a “ks” sound, so when the word was read by English speakers, they said “acks-oh-lawtl”.
I just pulled that out of my ass, though.
ETA: Okay, did a little research. It looks like the letter X is used in Spanish, and it used to have a “sh” sound, but it changed over time.