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by Navarr 756 days ago
Is this pronounced Wax-a-lot-l or Wax-o-lowt?
3 comments

In Nahuatl it would be “wa-sha-lot” iirc. The l is silent when the end of the word ends in “tl” and x is a “sh” sound.
That's what I was trying to reference, but I left the X in the English "Wax" [wax][alotl].

I am very curious what the author intended though

> I am very curious what the author intended though

I am assuming wæksəlɒtəl, that's how most pronounce the animal

Not silent, but not either of the L sounds in English, /l/ as in lever and and /ɫ/ as in trouble. It's the ll in Welsh, /ɬ/ in IPA. If you pronounce it /t/ you'll be closer than /tɫ/, like bottle.
A /t/ from the back of your throat and not the tongue against the teeth I think?
Fun fact, x is an sh sound because that's how it was in medieval Spanish around the time Spaniards got there and wrote down the words. Around this same time is when the Old Spanish sh sound was shifting to the value it has in the word México and later a spelling reform changed it to J or g before i and e (except eg. in a bunch of mexican place names which retrained old spelling)

I believe in other Iberian languages such as Portuguese, Catalan and Basque, the sh sound is spelled with X.

I presume it rhymes with the fish.
Axolotl are salamanders.
I read it as "wax - o - lotool". A little difficult to pronounce in any case.