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TERRY MOORE : WHY IS THE ‘X’ THE UNKNOWN ?


Basically, we know the letter “X” in Math class but now we used it in every culture in the world such as, the X files, project X, X prize and else. Mr. Moore trying to explain why we use X in every culture by sharing a story which happened about six years ago. It started when he decided to learn Arabic language which is is supremely logical language. for instance, when Arabian call “Al-Jebra” as meaning a system for reconciling disparate parts, then it becomes “Al-gebra” in English which represent the same meaning.

The Arabic text containing this mathematical wisdom finally came to Europe in 12 century. One problem that European (e.g Spain) cannot handle is there are some sounds in Arabic that doesn’t exist in Spain’s box voices, unless they do lot of practice. Those various sounds tended to be represented by the character that available in European language.
The sound of ‘Syin’ was also the first letter to the word “Syaiin” which is mean something and in English it become something unknown. Simply in Arabic, we only need to put ‘Al’ in the beginning of it and it changes in unknown thing.


In the case of Spanish, they do not have sound like “Sh”, then they borrow the “Ck” sound from the classical Greek in order to say “Kai”. Next on, when these materials were translated into European language, they just replaced the Kai with the Latin X and it formed for Mathematic textbook for almost 600 years. In short, it’s happened just because the Spanish doesn’t have “Sh” sound.
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