Name of Mexico - Phonetic Evolution

Phonetic Evolution

The Nahuatl word Mēxihco, pronounced, was transliterated as "Mexico" using Medieval Spanish orthography, in which the x represented the voiceless postalveolar fricative (, the equivalent of English sh in "shop"). At the time, Spanish j represented the voiced postalveolar fricative (, like the English s in "vision", or French j today). However, by the end of the fifteenth century j had evolved into a voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant as well, and thus both x and j represented the same sound . During the sixteenth century this sound evolved into a voiceless velar fricative (, like the ch in Scottish "loch"), and México began to be pronounced .

Given that both x and j represented the same new sound (/x/), and in lack of a spelling convention, many words that originally had the /ʃ/ sound, began to be written with j (e.g. it wasn't uncommon to find both exército and ejército used during the same time period, even though that due to historicity, the correct spelling would have been exército). The Real Academia Española, the institution in charge of regulating the Spanish language, was established in 1713, and its members agreed to simplify spelling, and set j to represent /x/ regardless of the original spelling of the word, and x to represent /ks/. (The ph spelling underwent a similar removal, in that it was simplified as f in all words, e.g. philosophía became filosofía.)

Nevertheless, there was ambivalence in the application of this rule in Mexican toponyms: México was used alongside Méjico, Texas and Tejas, Oaxaca and Oajaca, Xalixco and Jalisco, etc., as well as in proper and last names: Xavier and Javier, Ximénez and Jiménez are spelling variants still used today. In any case, the spelling Méjico for the name of the country is little used in Mexico or the rest of the Spanish-speaking world today. The Real Academia Española itself recommends the spelling "México".

In present-day Spanish, México is pronounced or, the latter pronunciation used mostly in dialects of the Caribbean and some places in South America where has become a voiceless glottal fricative . In English, however, the x does not represent either the original sound or the modern sound, but the spelling pronunciation at the beginnings of words and, or in other positions; thus Mexico is pronounced /ˈmɛksɨkoʊ/ in English.