Ted Summary and Reflection

WHY IS “X”THE UNKNOWN

By Terry Moore

Summarized by Najmiatul Fauza

In this speech Mr Moore will give the answer  about the popular question t that is why is “x”the unknown?

Where that X comes from? About six years ago, he decided to learn Arabic which turned out to be a supremely logical language. To write a word or a phrase or a sentence in Arabic is like crafting an equation because every part is extremely precise and carries a lot of information. Arabic was one of the reasons as western science  , mathematics and engineering was really worked out in the first few centuries.

The little system in Arabic called Al-Jebra or Al-Jebr in English. One example , the Arabic text containing this mathematical wisdom finally made their way to Europe or called Spain in the 11^th and 12^th centuries.  The problem in translating the Arabic into Spain were some sounds in Arabic that do not exist in European Languages. One of the culprits, the letter SHEEN and it made the sound “sh”. It also the very first letter of the word “SHAIAN” which means (something) or some undefined , unknown thing. Adding “Al”in front of the word “Shaian”it became the define word “Al-Shaiu” the unknown thing. The problem for the medieval Spanish scholars who were tasked with translating this material was that the letter “SHEEN”and the word “shaiun” could not ne rendered into Spanish because it does not have that ”SH” sound . so, by convention they created a rule in which they borrowed the “CK”sound from the classical Greek in the form of the letter “KAI”. Later when this material was translated into a common European language which is to say latin , they simply replace the Greek “kai” with the latin X.  Once that happen, this material was in latin it formed the basis for mathematics textbook for almost 600 years.

Now we have the answer to our question, why is “x” the unknown ? because they can’t say “sh”in Spanish. I still little bit confused about the history why X is the unknown. However this speech give us the knowledge of the history of the unknown word X is because the Spanish could not say “SH “sound of the Arabic Language.