The ancient Spanish basically all had a lisp. Nobody thought about it at the time and it eventually became the status quo and then correct pronunciation. I base this on absolutely nothing and will die on this hill.
There is an urban legend that everyone in Spain started speaking this way because of the super-inbred Habsburg kings had a terrible lisp and everyone wanted to make him sound normal. There’s no evidence of it, but considering this guy was king of Spain…
When Spain invaded Latinamerica, they recorded the language of the natives phonetically but there were a lot of sounds that didn’t have an Spanish equivalent so they just wrote X for all of them and now they’re trying to retroactively fix the spelling of several words so you’re kinda right. For example, Spain insists México is spelled Méjico.
Edit: Apparently, as of recently, Spain no longer insists México is spelled Méjico but still keeps it around as a correct spelling (it’s not, it’s literally only them).
That sounds interesting, do you have a source? I’d like to learn more.
I’ve read that in ancient Spanish the letter X had in some cases the sound that the letter J has in modern Spanish, therefore the spelling of some words changed accordingly: Don Quixote is Don Quijote in modern day Spanish.
The ancient Spanish basically all had a lisp. Nobody thought about it at the time and it eventually became the status quo and then correct pronunciation. I base this on absolutely nothing and will die on this hill.
There is an urban legend that everyone in Spain started speaking this way because of the super-inbred Habsburg kings had a terrible lisp and everyone wanted to make him sound normal. There’s no evidence of it, but considering this guy was king of Spain…
When Spain invaded Latinamerica, they recorded the language of the natives phonetically but there were a lot of sounds that didn’t have an Spanish equivalent so they just wrote X for all of them and now they’re trying to retroactively fix the spelling of several words so you’re kinda right. For example, Spain insists México is spelled Méjico.
Edit: Apparently, as of recently, Spain no longer insists México is spelled Méjico but still keeps it around as a correct spelling (it’s not, it’s literally only them).
That sounds interesting, do you have a source? I’d like to learn more.
I’ve read that in ancient Spanish the letter X had in some cases the sound that the letter J has in modern Spanish, therefore the spelling of some words changed accordingly: Don Quixote is Don Quijote in modern day Spanish.