This whole video was a ploy to get you to follow me on Threads. www.threads.net/@nameexplainyt

Excuse but the letter is actually pronounced “The artist formerly known as Twitter.”

When missionaries developed a writing system for indigenous African languages in South Africa, they chose x, c and q for the different types of clicking sounds, as the normal sounds those letters make can all be represented by other letters.

In Portuguese, x can have 4 different sounds: “ks”, “z”, “s”, or “sh” depending on the word

Multiple Xs also make me think of Castlemaine beer & Trebor extra strong mints. Or indeed, Scott Pilgrim. The 'x' sound in the languages of Spain is all over the place. Historically it could make an aspirate 'h' sound, as in Quixote or México - but in Basque it usually follows T to make a 'ch' sound, in Catalan it can make that sound alone and in Galician the 'sh' sound persists.

St. Andrew was crucified on an X shaped cross, which is where the Scottish flag got it's symbolism from.

Interesting, hugs and kisses are the opposite letters where I grew up: lips were the circles of O and arms crossing behind someone in a hug were X

In Chinese (and Japanese) characters, X also represents 10! But the cross is horizontal, not diagonal - '十'. Since their character for 1 is '一', if they used a decimal system, then it makes sense to represent 10 with a bar through the character for 1. But that's all quite old fashioned - in modern Chinese and Japanese, Roman-style numbers are often used. In a fancy restaurant, you may see characters used, but in a fast food joint, Roman numbers are also used.

X sounds(in portuguese): /ks/ in "anexo" /z/ in "exercer" /s/ in "sexta" /ʃ/* in "caixa" / /** in "excelente" *means "ch" or "sh" ** means no sound

That's not true. The real reason why it's called an x-ray is that Roentgen didn't know what to call his discovery at the time, so he put x as a place holder until he came up with a name. He eventually came up with a name which was in his native German Röntgenaufnahme, or Roentgen's recorder, which is the modern German name for x-ray. The English-speaking world was just never notified that x-ray was a placeholder. Thus, we English speakers got stuck with the placeholder

Personally I like the letter X for its versatility. It's like we set the rules aside for this one letter. How do you pronounce the x? Well, however you're intended to in that specific instance.

how to pronounce X in English: - ks (like in box) - eks (like in x-ray) - z (like in xylophone) - gz (like in example) - gzh (like in luxurious) - ksh (like in complexion) yeah, English ain’t confusing whatsoever lol

In Mexico the X is pronounced as a spanish J, which is similar to the english H sound

In greek, x is used way more often at the start of words (anywhere in a word in general). By the way, in greek the character that represents the 'ks' sound is this ξ, and not this character χ, which makes a different sound.

There is a beer from Queensland Australia called XXXX. It is said that it was named because Queenslanders did not how to spell "beer". Then there is the top right X to close a program and shorthand for "exit", room or intimate partner. And the social media platform owned by a certain well known self promoter.

@4:00 2+8=10. There is no X in Mandarin, only in the Romanization of the language. Jesus would have likely been crucified on a "T" or "X", but not a "t" as is usually depicted.

In a play I was in many years ago, a certain character (not the one I played) played the xylophone. The play's director pronounced it "ex-eye-lo-phone" rather than "zy-lo-phone". Drove us all nuts.

X is important when it comes in 3.

Very thorough, but with one omission. X is often used as the initial for words starting with "ex~", such as "x sports" for "extreme sports", and often replaces "ex~" altogether, like with "xtra creamy".

The weirdest letter for "not really being needed" is Q. Which was already needed when it was adopted in to the Latin alphabet, and has hung around ever since, for some reason.

Brilliant. Well done as usual.

Q is another letter which can be represented by other letters. Usually it sounds as 'cw/kw' [as in queen, quick, quiet, quill] except in loan words from French and Italian when it sounds as a hard C or a K.

I'm guessing X in Roman numerals come in the form of showing numbers through hand signs from a distance. As you've mentioned ten is formed from 2 fives, so showing the hands out as two palms to represent 10 might eventually be shown as two hands in a crossed manner.

I like the letter "X" in language just because it is used so rarely.

iPhone X was never a breakaway from numbers, but a stylistically chosen roman numeral, officially pronounced ‘i-phone ten’. Likewise, OSX was always officially pronounced ‘o ess ten’ (short for (Mac(intosh)) Operating System Ten). That didn’t stop many people from calling both ‘eks’ though.

7:42 It must be noted that both the x in iPhone X and macOSX is just ten in roman numeral, so they should be pronunced as iphone ten and macOS ten. In fact iphobeX was the successor to the iphone 9 and preceded iphone 11. Same for osX except that now its called simply macOS

5:33 They might've came from the Etruscan tally system, which used a line for 1, cross for 10 cross with a vertical bar through it for 100, a circle with a cross in it for 1,000, & halved them for 5, 50 & 500. 5 and 50 were the lower half of the symbols and 500 was the bottom-right half

4:04 Ah yes, my favourite operation, rotated multiplication

As for the association of X with science fiction and technology, I always thought it had to do with the letter being commonly used to denotate experimental designs such as the Bell X-1 or X-15 rocket planes, thus leading to the letter being associated with the cutting edge of technology.

4:08 You wrote plus, not times, on the slide. So the unknown thing is 8. You spoke "2 unknown things" which matches our symbolic use of juxtaposition (no symbol) to imply multiplication. That's what your slide should have shown.

In Queensland they have XXXX (four ex) beer. The rest of us Aussies joke that it's called that because Banana Benders (Queenslanders) can't spell "beer".

In regards to kissing, it works out quite nicely in English that the phoneme for X (KS) sounds a lot like the very word kiss.

Polish doesn't use officially X but Poles will unofficially use the letter to replace the KS digraph which is very common in Polish.

The letter X was *everywhere* in the 90s, because of the marketing toward Generation X (which was named because the sociologists commenting on the generation to come after the Baby Boomers didn't know what else to call it) decided that this would be the "extreme" generation. The X became retroactively an abbreviation for "Xtreme." Thus, we got the X-Games, the XFL, Xtreme Ghostbusters, X's on cans of Mt. Dew, Pepsi promoting itself as for "Generation-NeXt" (a variant on their previous slogan, "the choice of a new generation"), and all sorts of other extreme, danger-loving, hyper-athletic, active lifestyle aesthetics that was supposed to define a generation, despite the fact that most of us were, in actuality, sitting on the couch watching TV or playing video games. Elon still thinks it's the 90s.

X can be the kheo equivalent in bangla. Kheo is a letter that isnt really a letter but a combination of the letters that make the k and sh sound. But that combination appears so many times in our language that the juktakkkhor (combined letter) in itself is considered as an honorary letter. Even though it really isnt and you could acheive the same sound by writting k and sh together anyway. K = ক / sh = ষ and kheo = ক্ষ (Kheo isnt actually on the keyboard, you have to type ksh together to find it in a suggested word lol)

X has a few other sounds just like Old English

X doesn't exist in the Irish alphabet. Along with j, k, q, v, w, y, and z. So when you see a name like Siobhán, the bh is essentially a v. As for the 'ks' sound in X, Irish words very rarely hit that particular sound. It's often a softer 'chs' sound, being more throaty and phlegmmy (that's the best word I can think of), akin to the Hebrew ch in 'chanukah'.

What's the difference between x and nc-17?

It also makes a “gz” sound in “Exempt”

Saturday Night Fever was an X film apparently. When The Goodies parodied it Bill (or Graeme) asks Tim if he's seen it to which he replies "Certainly not. It's an X film, I might get scared".

i always saw xoxo like x = pursed lips in a kiss, and o = arms around someone in a hug

At 6:16 "Sign your X on the line...." Must be a British thing!! In the US, we say something to the effect of, "sign your name on the line by the X"....there it's really no particular way of saying it....

i always thought "xxx" was so because its for censorship, as in, "to make it unknown/covered" because theyre showing things that they might want to censor, like in front of children for example. this guess also extends to kisses because children are also expected to cover their eyes in front of mouth to mouth kisses.

So is CGP Gray a patron or just another Tim?

Perhaps you omitted to mention, in terms of 'that certain something', the talent show, 'X Factor'. It's strange that I've just been tracking down some vinyl from Bulgaria in conjunction with my 'Girls Of The Golden East' music Blog, as my name in Bulgarian begins with an 'X', as in Христо, pointing up that connection between the Greek and Cyrillic Alphabets. As I'm from a certain sporting generation, continuing the Balkan theme, I'll forever remember the 'X-Certificate Tennis' we got from the player that shares my birthday, Ilie Năstase and 'Buster' Mottram versus John McEnroe and Peter Fleming, where one of the players (Fleming) looked like something out of one of those Nazi propaganda films of Leni Riefenstahl, in his long, white trousers while Mottram actually was a real-live Neo-Nazi, as a National Front member. Strange that he played alongside a player from the then Communist world.

I always thought X is used for 10 because of tally marks...|||| crossed with a diagonal line. (today it's most associated with prisoners counting on the wall) Two diagonal lines would equal 10. According to Wikipedia this system might date back to prehistoric times.

thanks to the Flying Hellfish episode I learnt that you can use the letter X as an alternative to writing your signature.

O is used for hug because when you hug someone you make a O with your arms. X for kiss because when you say kiss it kind of sounds like your saying ex

I maintain that if we had some spelling reform for English, we could give the superfluous letters some better reason to be there. X, since it's commonly associated in other languages as at least close to "sh", could just become that. C could be changed to represent the "ch" sound (though, since "ch" is really a combination of "t" and "sh", that would be an interesting circumstance, to say the least). This brings us to Q, which would be harder to figure out. We already have K, and QU could easily just turn to KW. "Zh" and both versions of "th" don't have letters associated with them anymore. However, we rarely even use "zh" (usually combined with "d" for the J sound), which would make one think it could be a "th", but neither of those are anywhere near being associated with Q. I mean, when it comes to English, Q does seem like the true least important letter (though I understand completely that when Romanizing other languages' spelling, it is quite important).

Im surprised you didn't mention xxx for moonshine and 30x distilled

Fear not! In german X always makes the "KS" sound, even in words like Xylophone (can be a mouthful)

I thought the reason X meant "kisses" is because it makes the "ks" sound, which is just the word "kiss" minus the vowel.

I used to think the prefix ex as in former was spelled with just one letter but it's actually spelled E X I'm like What's the point

The correct answer to the math equation at 4:04 is 8, not 5.

0:25 */x/ Samekh is read with a "ḫ", not a "k".

It is 2 Vs of 2 hands together

Gz sound in English too. Exactly

X, our favourite algebralien, is very important

What about the word hamburger? Is it just a combination of ham and burger, or is it from the demonym of Hamburg? And if so, did we derive the word ham, the word burger, or both from German?

Only 7 1/2 more weeks until X-mas.

What's Twitter?

4 minutes into the video you did addition instead multiple which means you stated that 2+5=10

How come the English language has two letters as well as a diagram that make the same sound that being c k and ch. To a lesser extent q and x. The English language really likes the k sound

4:04 you might wanna check your maths

I like how you tried to reintrepret the X symbol

I pronounce X as Twitter

If 2+x= 10 Then, x = 5 😂

Xtremely interesting

Keep the X is Xmas!

Isn't the X in Alexander pronounced more like gz?

​ @LuDa-lf1xd In Catalan in most cases the x used for the sh sound, like in xampany (champagne). The sound can also be spelled as ix, like in dibuix (drawing). I'm not familiar enough with Castilian to know of any examples of words where x is pronounced like sh in that language.

In Welsh, there is no X. It is written cs. Letters K, Q, V and Z have also been excluded since sounds they make can be made by other letters.

X isn't used in Finnish at all except in foreign words eg. brand names. We use just "KS".

I’m afraid you’re wrong with the examples from Apple, the iPhone X used X in the name, but was always referred to as ten (by Apple at least). The same goes for macOS X.

Chi came from the Phoenician letter T not Samekh which is S.

There also gen x

2+5=10 I think you meant to use a multiplication symbol hehe.

X marks the spot.

XXXX is also a beer

In Katsumotonese X makes a "kh" sound in Loch

I was taught X was hugs and O was kisses, it makes a lot more sense... X looks like crossed arms and O looks like a mouth.

x is only important for x burger

4:05 💀💀💀

Groundbreaking discover (conjecture): X is ten because it's two Vs

x should just be the ch or kh sound

I am Mr. Lego

A better title is Why x is the strangest letter

4:07 + instead of X or * 2 + 5 = 10

1:45 Actually, X is worth 10 points in Scrabble, alongside K, W, Y, and Z.

The "x" in Chinese was added by the communists when they re-invented their alphabet used for transliteration (when Peking became Beijing). They also changed many chinese characters (words) to more simple forms.

4:53 Er, it’s pronounced like “shay”

Maffs

I only searched this because I thought my name was special because it’s xhejn but it’s pronounced Jane it’s always xhejn its my real name xhejn random right? My mom names is xhulija so its only us that we have the name x😅

X has never made sense to me

Highest rating. Not lowest rating. Its telling you X is the highest. Put the X on top of your head and find the very center. What you're going to find at the center of your brain is the Pineal gland. Well guess what? Thats also where you'll find Golgotha.

It can also make a "gs" sound in English as well.

What I will never understand is why some people felt the need to introduce symbols that stand for clusters of sounds, such as X = K + S or the Greek symbol Psi = P+S. I mean we could even invent new letters that stand for arbitrary clusters of consonants, such as ST, FR, BL etc.

X is important when its roman numerals

When hunting for treasure, X marks the spot. Arrrrrgh!

Ha! More facts to annoy my friends with