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I spent quite some time reading about phonetics last night...
@mespilus the K is not silent: /ksi/. I don't know the IPA symbol for the sound Brits add between the /k/ and the /s/, perhaps @fizzy.bleach can enlighten us.
@mdcc_tester I was thinking of the greek letter ξι?
Lolo-
I was thinking of the greek letter ξι?
Which is usually transliterated into X for English (and others who get their Greek via Latin) readers, e.g. xenophobia, xylophone, Xanthi.
Slavs presumably use Ks (or Кс in Cyrillic) because Cyrillic Х is already analogous to Greek χ -
Between the K and the S of Ksyrium? I think many Brits would add a schwa.
This is known as vowel epenthesis. It's often used to make loanwords easier to pronounce because the phonotactics (rules about what sounds can go next to each other) of the borrowing language doesn't allow a certain cluster. In this case it's /ks/ (word-initially).
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I agree the original 'ksi' does not have a silent 'k',
and doesn't when used in mathematics,
but, when misused in 'english' words, with a leading 'x',
the 'ks' comes out as a 'z'.
Xenon is never Ksenon.
gbj_tester
fizzy.bleach
mespilus
STOP GETTING LINGUISTICS WRONG ALL OF YOU!