Quite possibly. - Edit 1
Before modification by Camilla at 06/06/2010 09:46:46 AM
First, Wikipedia says nothing of the sort that I can see. Type in "Don Quixote" and go to "pronunciation" and it supports my pronunciation.
I went directly to the letter X, which says that
In Old Spanish, X was pronounced [ʃ], as it is still currently in other Iberian Romance languages. Later, the sound evolved to a hard [x] sound. In modern Spanish, the hard [x] sound is spelled with a j, or with a g before e and i, though x is still retained for some names (notably México, which alternates with Méjico
I then looked up Old Spanish, and found that
Old Spanish, or Old Castilian (ISO 639-3 code osp), is an early form of the Spanish language that was spoken on the Iberian Peninsula from the 10th century until roughly the beginning of the 15th century, before a consonantic readjustment gave rise to the evolution of modern Spanish.
But I am very much aware that this is wikipedia.
However, if there is another site or page that says the x had changed to /h/, that site or page is wrong. How do we know this? Simple. The rendering of Aztec words made by Carochi and other Spaniards used x for /sh/.
More to the point, Carochi, in his Grammar of Nahuatl of 1645, feels the need to explain a few sounds - for example, "usan del o algunas vezes tan cerrada, y obscura, que tira algo à la pronunciacion de la u". However, he felt no need to clarify that the x is /sh/, as at the time of printing (1645) it was a current pronunciation. That he should have realized he needed to say something if it had been different can be seen in his note "Tampoco se pronuncia la n antes de la x sino que la x se pronuncia con mas fuerça".
I stand corrected.