that one. Also, those very sounds tend not to be 27 represented by the characters that are available in 28 European languages. 29 Here's one of the culprits. This is the letter SHeen, and it 30 makes the sound we think of as SH -- "sh." It's also the very 31 first letter of the word shalan, which means "something" 32 just like the English word "something" -- some undefined, 33 Notes: unknown thing. 34 Now in Arabic, we can make this definite by adding the 35 definite article "al." So this is al-shalan -- the unknown 36 thing. And this is a word that appears throughout early 37 mathematics, such as this 10th century derivation of 38 proofs. 39 The problem for the Medieval Spanish scholars who 40 were tasked with translating this material is that the letter 41 SHeen and the word shalan can't be rendered into Spanish 42 because Spanish doesn't have that SH, that "sh" sound. So 43 by convention, they created a rule in which they borrowed 44 the CK sound, "ck" sound, from the classical Greek in the 45 form of the letter Kai. 46 Later when this material was translated into a common 47 European language, which is to say Latin, they simply 48 replaced the Greek Kai with the Latin X. And once that 49 happened, once this material was in Latin, it formed the 50 basis for mathematics textbooks for almost 600 years. 51
27 that one. Also, those very sounds tend not to be 28 represented by the characters that are available in 29 European languages. 30 Here's one of the culprits. This is the letter SHeen, and it 31 makes the sound we think of as SH -- "sh." It's also the very 32 first letter of the word shalan, which means "something" 33 just like the English word "something" -- some undefined, Notes: 34 unknown thing. 35 Now in Arabic, we can make this definite by adding the 36 definite article "al." So this is al-shalan -- the unknown 37 thing. And this is a word that appears throughout early 38 mathematics, such as this 10th century derivation of 39 proofs. 40 The problem for the Medieval Spanish scholars who 41 were tasked with translating this material is that the letter 42 SHeen and the word shalan can't be rendered into Spanish 43 because Spanish doesn't have that SH, that "sh" sound. So 44 by convention, they created a rule in which they borrowed 45 the CK sound, "ck" sound, from the classical Greek in the 46 form of the letter Kai. 47 Later when this material was translated into a common 48 European language, which is to say Latin, they simply 49 replaced the Greek Kai with the Latin X. And once that 50 happened, once this material was in Latin, it formed the 51 basis for mathematics textbooks for almost 600 years.
Fluency_Packet_6-8.docx