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Why is **"Xy"** pronounced as **"[Ki Shi]{キ シ}"** in **[Xylitol]{キシリトール}**?

I believe "Xy" can pronounced as "Zai", which is probably a valid sound in
Japanese.

I would like to know its etymology too, if there is any.
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2012-08-27T13:49:11.893
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etymology pronunciation loanwords
Why is "Xy" pronounced as "Ki Shi" in Xylitol「キシリトール」?
Xyl~ is the same as Xyl in Xylophone (coming from 'wood' in Greek). How it is
pronounced varies between languages. You can see this by the explanation on
the Japanese wiki article for
[Xylophone](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B7%E3%83%AD%E3%83%95%E3%82%A9%E3%83%B3),
which shows the different pronunciations in katakana:

Japanese: シロフォン

English: ザイロフォウン

German: クシュロフォーン

French: グジロフォヌ

Italian: クシロフォノ、シロフォノ

In German the IPA for Xylitol is
[ksyliˈtoːl](http://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Xylitol), so キシリトール is likely to
have come directly from German. Two groups, one French and one German,
discovered Xylitol nearly simultaneously, so it makes sense for German to be
the source language in this case.
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2012-08-27T15:11:31.233
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It comes from the Greek word **xylon** , which means wood. The Greek word
xylon is pronounced " **ksilon** ", so the Japanese transcription is faithful
to the original Greek pronunciation, rather than the English corruption of the
word.

See the answer to [this
question](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/19493/why-is-x-used-
when-we-pronounce-it-z) for the reason why "x" is pronounced "z" at the
beginning of English words.

As for the origin of the word, the Greek word xylon means wood. The -itol
suffix is added to denote that it is a sugar alcohol. It is produced from
xylose, which was first isolated from wood (such as birch).
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2012-08-27T15:12:05.800
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2012-08-31T18:27:51.517
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I'd agree that it probably came from the German pronunciation, as they have
taken a few loanwords from the German language, such as "doitsu-go" (I don't
remember the romaji for it) which is "German" which comes from the German word
"Deutsch" for the language. Or "arubaito" which comes from "albeit" or hobby
or something. Its been about 6yrs since I studied Japanese, so apologies if
I'm wrong or haven't used correct romaji.
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2013-09-13T22:06:25.357
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