Now that you mention it, those X examples would work. “Roux” might be better, though, as more thoroughly incorporated into English (“chateaux” is just a pretentious way of saying “house”, but there’s no other real English word for “roux”).
hmm…I guess xerox would be the same.
Wonder how many other x=z words there are?
The wonders of the English language. :rolleyes:
Anyone for some Gallagher?
Most English words that start with X stem from one of four Greek roots: Xero-, meaning “dry”, Xantho-, meaning “Yellow”, Xylo-, meaning “Wood”, or Xeno-, meaning “alien”. All are conventionally pronounced like Z, in English.
Pretty much all the ones that start with “x” where the “x” is not part of a compound word:
xenon
xenophobia
xanthium
Xerxes
Xavier
xylem
xi
For a silent x there’s choux (pronounced shoo), as in choux pastry. French in origin, but it’s part of English now. (Technically it’s the plural of chou, but both are pronounced the same and choux is often used as a singular.)
OED entry.
“Houses”, to be picky. The singular is “chateau”.
I like “roux.” I hear it commonly enough that I don’t even think of it as a French work (although I understand if others don’t nearly encounter it as often–I like to cook. I wasn’t familiar with the word “choux” until this thread, though.) Another possibility is the word “faux.”
I think those examples (and roux and choux) work for X.
It is tough to find anything to compare the pronunciation of “marijuana” with as there are no English words containing “iuana”. However, the Merrian Webster pronunciations of “marijuana” and “iguana” suggest to me that the J is silent in the former. The “uana” part of “iguana” is pronounced just the same as in “marijuana” and hence cannot have been influenced by the J (or, I suppose, it could have been influenced excatly the same by both J and G).
Hence I am inclined to accept “marijuana” for J. “Rijstaffel” works too.
So just looking for V and Y.
“cockayne” with, interestingly, an alternative spelling of “cockaigne”, which includes a silent G.
The best I can do for V is “civvies”, requiring use of a double letter, which we had avoided to date.