Jalapa or Xalapa ?

Hi!

Someone's signature says "Jalapa/Xalapa? Tejano/Texano? Quijote/Quixote?"

Which one is right then?

As for Quijote vs Quixote, I thought that the one with J is the Spanish spelling, whereas the one with X is the English spelling.

In Modern Spanish it's Quijote . Quixote is the spelling for the Medieval pronunciation ( x was pronounced like "sh" ).

I see.

So the ones with J is the modern Spanish version.

Gracias!

Those are old Spanish names, usually names of places are kept the same for respect to the people and the place, etc. but names of things like Quijote, etc. can be changed since it doesn't really bother anyone.

When "Don Quixote" was written, was the "x' already obsolete, or becomming obslolete?

It Was the standard in Spanish when Don Quixote was writen. X in Mexico is due to the same reason. In fact probably J was not always a Spanish letter, it may be adopted from French or something. Italian lacks the letter J as well. I'll do some research.

As Guest mentioned before, modern Italian lacks of the letter J however lots of places in Italy include the letter J, the same thing happens with a lot of Spanish places.

J in medieval Spanish represents a ZH sound as in English "leiSure", or the sound which Valencian, French, Portuguese, and Romanian J represents.

Then there was a desonorization in the evolution towards modern Spanish, where the ZH sound -written with a J or a G before I & E- and the SH sound -written with an X- merged into an SH sound, which then was written written with a J until today.

Some Spanish words which had an X in medieval Spanish:
complejo <== complexo
reflejo <== reflexo
Quijote <== Quixote
Alejandro <== Alexandro
tejano <== texano
mejicano <== mexicano

Notice than English usually retains the X and pronounce it as an KS sound, instead of an SH sound.

In the case of proper names, mostly both versions with J and X are allowed.

HTH!

I prefer those words with X. They look seXier. Let's spell them in the old fashion again.

<< I prefer those words with X. They look seXier. Let's spell them in the old fashion again. >>

In the case of proper names, both J and X are allowed, so you can use which ever you want.

<<I prefer those words with X. They look seXier. Let's spell them in the old fashion again. >>

Some while ago, one poster claimed that much of the charm and elegance of Spanish stemmed from the near absence of angular letters, like k, w, etc. In keeping with this principle, wouldn't it be better to replace the remaining x's with something like 'qc' or just 'cc'?

For example:

"exito" -> "eqcito", "eccito", "ecsito", etc


Using just x -> cc variation, we'd get:

"excluir" -> "ecccluir"

"exceso" -> "ecceso" or "eccceso"

"xenofobia" -> "ccenofobia"

In that case x should be replaced by cs since x sounds like cs in Spanish:
ecsito
ecscluir
ecsceso
csenofobia
secso
and so on

<<In that case x should be replaced by cs since x sounds like cs in Spanish:>>.

What about words like:

leccion, acceso, accidente.

I think "ccenofobia" has a certain classy look. You might even go for:

ccenophobia, ccenopfobia, or ccenophfobia

I also think the 3 c's in a row in "ecccluir" looks kinda cool, too.

ecccluir looks too secci.

Both Jalapa and Xalapa are alright.

Writing xalapeño instead of jalapeño looks weird, though. 'texano' instead of 'tejano' is also kind of weird. But I guess both are allowed.