Or why it’s absolutely essential to put things into perspective and not make a big deal out of them in order to get through it…
This time, it was Ke Bi who asked us: “Do you have an explanation for why the letter ‘x’ is pronounced ‘s’ in ‘dix-sept’ and ‘z’ in ‘dix-neuf’?”
A picture is worth a thousand words, so we’ll let Arnaud Hoedt and Jérôme Piron—both trained linguists—answer this question in a hilarious way.
Here’s a brief visual overview of the quirks of our beloved language in this humorous lecture—rich in historical, linguistic, and phonological insights—on certain aspects of the French language’s evolution…
For your information, in 2016, they wrote and directed the show “La Convivialité” at the Théâtre National de Bruxelles. This lecture-style performance, which addresses the issue of dogmatic attitudes toward spelling, has been touring the French-speaking world for the past three years. Following that, they published the book *La faute de l’orthographe* with Textuel. They describe themselves as follows: “Amateur linguists. Educators in (night)gowns. Trying to correct the past participle. Writing stuff. True-False Actors. Academy-Eaters.”
When asked, “Is that a valid expression?” Arnaud and Jérôme invariably reply, “Yes, you just used it.”