--- In cybalist@..., Omar Karamán <diogenes@...> wrote:
>As to 16th century Spanish, this is what was told:
At that time, x was pronounced as sh, and j as zh (the voiced
equivalent). This is the same situation as in Portuguese today and in
older French (I have no date for this), e.g. <chevaux>, pl. of
<cheval> would be pronounced cheváush (sort of portuguese-like
inflection, yes?).
At a certain time sh -> kh, and zh -> kh, the present day
pronounciation of the letter j. Since now both the letters j and x
were pronounced the same, the letter x was generally replaced by j in
Spanish orthography.
Examples: The original Aztec pronounciation of Mexico (Aztec word) is
Meshiko (forgot about vowel lengths and such). In Basque you see the
spelling tx- for ch-, which makes sense as t-sh-. The state of Texas
was originally spelled Tejas, pronounced Tezhas.
Torsten