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2023-03-12 12:34 dustin  
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when ^ enters the next cave of his abc journey, he finds that the history of "x" is just as mysterious as its modern symbolism!  
  
history of the letter "x":  
  
| this is the only latin letter where it seems to be uncertain if it comes from the phoenician alphabet or not! i found contradictory information about that, so probably it's a question which isn't answered yet by historians!  
  
| the possible phoenician root is their 15th letter "samekh" (see the shape in the middle of the cave, where both arrows go away from). the phoenicians spoke this letter [s] as in "slime". this letter may have been inspired by an egyptian hieroglyph for a pillar (see the huge left shape).  
  
| the greeks, who adopted the phoenician alphabet, are the unknown part of the chain. i haven't mentioned in the series yet that there were regional differences of the alphabet inside greece. while these differences were rather small and not so relevant for all other letters, the handling of the phoenician "samekh" was a major regional difference! basically there were two variants:  
\ in eastern greek regions, "samekh" became the greek "xi" without changing the alphabetical position (see the top-right shape where one arrow points at). in these eastern greek regions, "xi" was used for the double consonant [ks] (as in "box").  
\ in western greek regions, the phoenician "samekh" was dropped. however, those people also wanted an own letter for the [ks] double sound! why was everyone so fond of an extra letter for a double sound? well, it was because some greek syliables ended with the [ks] double sound, while almost all other syliables ended only with one consonant. so they added an extra letter for the [ks] double sound at the end of their alphabet, namely "chi" (see the bottom-right shape where the other arrow points at). as you can clearly see, this letter is the predecessor of the latin "x"! and now comes the crucial point: nobody seems to be certain if the western greeks created their "chi" out of the phoenician "samekh" or not (see the question mark in the cave!)   
  
if the western greeks created "chi" out of the phoenician "samekh", then our latin "x" has a phoenician root. if the western greeks invented the "chi" shape on their own, then "x" is the only latin letter without a phoenician root!  
  
| the rest of the story is quite straightforward: the old italic (etruscian) alphabet is based on the western greek version, and they adopted "chi" without any changes ([ks] sound, last position in the alphabet). same goes for the romans later.  
  
now you might wonder how "x" can be the last letter of the roman alphabet? aren't there two more letters to go? well, yes of course, and the two final letters "y" and "z" made their way into the latin alphabet in a very special manner. curious? keep following the series... :d  
  
remark 1: if you look at the modern greek alphabet...  
<a href="https://boulderdash.krissz.hu/images/caves/OibRhTJYXoxJ.png?type=20230113003958" target="external">https://boulderdash.krissz.hu/images/caves/OibRhTJYXoxJ.png?type=20230113003958</a>  
...you can see that both letters, the eastern greek "xi" (between "n" and "o") and the western "chi" ("x"-shape, almost at the end) have made it into the greek alphabet when it was standardized. Today, "xi" is the greek letter for the [ks] double sound, while "chi" makes two different sounds which both don't exist in English language (but both exist in German, and both are represented by German „ch“ which comes form Greek „chi“!) :d  
modern greek „chi“ sound 1: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_fricative" target="external">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_fricative</a>  
modern greek „chi“ sound 2: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_palatal_fricative" target="external">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_palatal_fricative</a>  
  
remark 2: to be precise, the etruscian alphabet does have three more letters after the "x", but none of them was adopted by the romans, so none of them has anything to do with modern latin "y" and "z".  
  
extra info: how did "x" become the symbol for "unknown"? (math, but also otherwise, e.g. "x-files")  
this has actually nothing to do with the above history. the arabs used to call mathematic variables "things", which means "shay" in arabic. when arabic mathematics came to europe (11th century a.d.), spanish scholars transcripted the arabic word "shay" into "xei" (old spanish "x" was spoken similar to [sh]) and soon abbreviated it as "x"! :d  
  
aaaaaaaaaand one more note:  
the short form "x-mas" for "christmas" has again to do with the greeks. after all the info here in this little article, maybe you want to figure it out for yourself as a little puzzle ;)  
  
a n s w e r:  
the start of "christmas", the "ch", comes from greek letter "chi", which, as we've seen, is x-shaped. so:  
christmas --&gt; ch-mas --&gt; x-mas! :d  
  
cave difficulty: unknown! (you'll soon see why...) :d