Letters Spelled Without Themselves
Letter | Spelling |
---|---|
A | eh |
B | - |
C | see |
D | - |
E | yi1 |
F | eph |
G | jee |
H | - |
I | eye (also “uy” or “aye”) |
J | zhay |
K | cay |
L | - |
M | - |
N | - |
O | eau2 |
P | - |
Q | cue |
R | - |
S | ehce |
T | - |
U | yew |
V | - |
W | dubya3 |
X | ecks |
Y | wei or wie4 |
Z | xee (See appendix.) |
Let me know if I missed anything.
Appendix: A guide to pronouncing English words starting with X
As we all know, there are no words in the English language starting with X. So when encountering such a dangerous beast (known to the select cadre of sporting professionals who seek them for thrills as “X‑words”), it is vital to toss the pronunciation rules out the window. It becomes time to free flow it.
Here is a non-exhaustive guide to some of the better researched words starting with X, for those acolytes of English who need a few steady footholds on their journey towards becoming the masters of X.
Xenon: JOY-nahn
Xena: THEE-nah
XOR: ECKS-clue-sieve ORE
Ximenez: <GARGLING SOUND>EH-men-neth
Xenophobe: “so but like really, where literally are you actually from, originally?”
Xo: any of, or variants on
- ho
- joe
- so
- show
- shall
- zao
- extra old
- jao
- drao
- zhao5
- “how do you say your name?”
- eckso
- ecks-oh
- КСO6—sounds like “k‑so”
- hug and kiss7
Remember, these are simply guidelines, not hard-and-fast rules; fluent speakers know to interpret them as they please based on gut feelings, pulling additional phonemes from their bottoms as needed to battle some of the more monstrous among this list. This is a crucial skill drilled over and over again with words from lists like this one until the English practitioner is comfortable conquering even X‑words never yet seen in the Anglosphere.
- Arguable since normally you’d say “e” from a closed glottis but “yi” from an open glottis. [▲]
- The whole point of this exercise is to abuse the language, so give me a break. [▲]
- Fine; “dubyu.” [▲]
- On the hope that you pronounce “ei” or “ie” as aɪ (aye); if your “ei” is eɪ and your “ie” is iË then you’ll end up saying “way” and “whee.” Y is simply a much more reliable vowel for this sound than any of AEIOU, and so it accepts no substitutes. Also if you’ve seen pinyin or speak German then “wei” or “wie” just look wrong here. [▲]
- Really stress that Ê’; I don’t even know where we got that “zh” sounds like it’s in “beige seizure equation”; I don’t know any Romanization that uses that. [▲]
- Yes, that’s Cyrillic. [▲]
- Because XOXO would be plural. [▲]