"Phonotactics" sounds like a great name for a linguistics-based video game
avramlevitter
My 8 year old actually asked me about this and I told her I didn’t have the full answer, but it’s part of how English works as a language.
Now I do.
mechcommander
Lol in Germany we don't have this rule with X-starting words.... so in Germany it realy is ksylophon and ksenon. And till now i didn't even know that the pronunciation of the X is different in English...
m.s.
To be fair with "tsunami", I've heard so many people pronounce the "ts" at the beginning (in the parts of the US I've lived in), and that's also how I pronounce it as well. I've also heard "sunami", but "tsunami" is out there as an established pronunciation.
adalinesimonian
As an Alexander who goes by Alex, I noticed after I started learning about linguistics that the "x" in my name is pronounced differently depending on whether the name is abbreviated or not. It's voiced (gz) in Alexander and unvoiced (ks) in Alex.
alexevans
This how I found out I have been pronouncing the X words wrong😂 I'm Indonesian and we pronounce things exactly how they're spelled 😭 I can't keep up with the hundreds of english grammar lores
aetherstarry
You forget sir, the ancient summoning incantation of "pspsps"!
woodneel
In Germany we pronounce the X in Xylophon und Xenon and also Psychologie and Tsunami are pronounced as written.
wihatmi
ESL here, I still pronounce it as KS and there is no force on earth that can make me stop (I say while my English mainly happens via text and watching videos.)
ninjaXladyXjae
It's not just before an /s/ sound. The letters p, t, k are ALWAYS silent when they appear word initial as part of a consonant cluster, like in "knife", "pterodactyl", "pneumonia"...
adrianblake
I consider myself fluent in English and yet I had never considered I was saying 'psychology' and 'tsunami' wrong, because in my native language 'psy' and 'tsu' are pretty easy to say!
"P-si", so it's easy to make it 'P-sy'. 'Tsu' have a similar pronunciation as the Japanese つ, just.. less front in the mouth? More middle ig!
yotamchii
I ran it through my smoking dusty home computer in my skull and noticed that in German it works out just perfect. Like the Ts in Tsunami, that is how you would pronounce a z in our language actually
robert
Where I was from we always called it an “eks-ylophone” but I’ve never heard this even from others in my home state so maybe my town was just weird 🤷
euphrates
In Britain (at least RP), 'Exit', is pronounced 'Ek-sit' when speaking although sometimes I do hear a /z/
junyissmart
English is my first language and I've always said the /t/ in "tsunami, " as well as in Hebrew (and Hebrew-via-Yiddish) loanwords like "tsuris" and "tzaddik."
alextemplemusic
Your transcription of anxiety was incorrect, it is the ng sound not an "n". Due to the n before k, x acting as a carrier.
alxa
I always þought it was pronounced like a normal x
ahmadmneimneh
People from my area think we have “the” generic American accent but examples such as you demonstrate here remind me that we don’t. Me, and pretty much everyone around me, calls the egress an ‘ek-si’ (although we think we say “ek-sit”). Many of us do pronounce the tsumani close to the way it’s spelled. I’ve often thought of the “ts” to be pretty equivalent to the ц sound in Russian. Maybe it’s because we have a lot of Russian speakers around here? Anyway, it’s fun to learn.
michelleb
I am not a native English speaker so it might just be that but I do say Ksylophone even in English haha although I do de emphasize the K a lot
