a fun linguistic-cultural tidbit that I've been thinking about since my edh games with @ViniWeizenmann and crew

the letter "x" in brazilian portuguese is pronounced "shees"

does that sound like a word you might know in english? say it out loud.

if we transcribe it phonetically, we get "xis"

go ahead and google image search the word "xis"

brazilians, like italians, and all ESL speakers in the world
adapt english words willy-nilly because they like how it sounds, because it's more efficient, because it's a word that comes from pop culture or tech...

a million reasons, really.

italian, for example, loves english computer words:

"cliccare" (to click)
"il computer"
"il mouse"
"lo scanner"

etc

"xis" is so cool to me though. it's layered. it looks like an innocuous morpheme, but it needs be pronounced to see the connection.

adapting "cheese" as a word is one thing, but adapting cheeseburgers into the dietary milieu is another.

brazilian also has other fun american words that only make sense if you know the phonetics:

• xampu
• uísque

and even more american words that are straight carbon-copies:

• kingsize, facebook, internet, hot dog, website, shopping, stress

in magic, many english words are usurping the brazilian terms in gameplay.

the brilliant @kozistranslator wrote her PhD dissertation on this phenomenon.

"to cast," for example, has been shortcut to "castar," despite the availability of a more traditional term in portuguese proper.

we may expect this, since magic is an american-based game, and many players must use english-language cards in brazil due to access and supply.

among so many aspects of daily life we take for granted in the USA is that english is dominating the world. we never have to face these types of decisions.

decisions about which words to use, or which words we have to save from obsoletion, or even decisions to learn a new language in order to play a new game.

anyway. all that unravels into another discussion.

i just thought "xis" was a delightful reminder of how flexible and curious language can be, and how fun it is to watch it morph in real time across borders.

thanks for reading!