Reply #13: x is part of the language. [View All]

[NuttyFluffers]

and the 'j' sound is just part of the shared phoneme between the two letters, 'j' and 'x'. there is a slight difference, just as there is a slight difference between 'y' and 'll', but for most speakers it is slurred into one phoneme. it was introduced because the native languages of america use the 'x' sound *a lot* and the closest approximation castillano had at the time was 'j', eventually they just adopted the 'x' like other alphabets. most alphabets are a process, just like language, things get added, things get dropped.

i believe the 'x' in mexico has to do with respect to the original native terms for the land, so they just updated the name with the new spelling. 'x' in many of the native tongues of meso-america has more of a "ch'" sound, almost sounding like a "sh" sound to americans; think of the british 'ch' like 'schedule' with an uptone and glottal stop. not an easy sound to make, let alone differenciate, for most english or spanish speakers, so it was adopted to sound like the phoneme of the letter 'jota.'