[iLikebeer]

Hopefully someone can answer this for me, it's been bugging me lately.
The letter "w". "Double u" as it's pronounced in English. Hmm. Okay, I know in older English or Latin they wrote "u"s as "v"s, but did they still have "u"s, and if so, how did they distinguish the two?

But here's where I get really confused. I'll go with English/French pronunciations of the alphabet here as follows: t u v w
English French
tee tay
you ugh (sorta rhymes with Hugh)
vee vay
double you doobla vay


So we call it a "double u" uu (kind of similar to the curvy "w" some people write) in English and they call it a "double v" in French. How did such a basic mistranslation happen there when the alphabet went to English? French is a romantic language, but Romans and William the Conquerer French people conquered England at different points. Is the difference in "double u" and "double v" because of different time periods when the languages were created and what the letters looked like at the time?

And off topic, but I think calling Bush Jr. by Dubya just makes our future generations even more illiterate than they would be without our help.

[rickey939]

I only know, a little bit, about double-D's actually. Sorry!

[BlueSky]

Not to answer your enquiry, iLikebeer, but I'm taking this op to say that I hate the letter W.

Every letter in the alphabet is one tiny ol' syllable until you get to w, and then it's 3 syllables...not 1, not 2, but 3 dumbass syllables.

I wish that internet inventor guy could have forseen the awkwardness of saying double-u, double-u, double-u [whatever] dot com and used it a more user friendly letter instead.

How about i i i [whatever] dot com. Or d d d [whatever] dot com. That one just sails out the lips and sounds kind of musical to boot.

I hate the letter W. It should be pronounced wee or wa or wo.

[aristotles]

Originally Posted by iLikebeer

Hopefully someone can answer this for me, it's been bugging me lately.
The letter "w". "Double u" as it's pronounced in English. Hmm. Okay, I know in older English or Latin they wrote "u"s as "v"s, but did they still have "u"s, and if so, how did they distinguish the two?

But here's where I get really confused. I'll go with English/French pronunciations of the alphabet here as follows: t u v w
English French
tee tay
you ugh (sorta rhymes with Hugh)
vee vay
double you doobla vay


So we call it a "double u" uu (kind of similar to the curvy "w" some people write) in English and they call it a "double v" in French. How did such a basic mistranslation happen there when the alphabet went to English? French is a romantic language, but Romans and William the Conquerer French people conquered England at different points. Is the difference in "double u" and "double v" because of different time periods when the languages were created and what the letters looked like at the time?

And off topic, but I think calling Bush Jr. by Dubya just makes our future generations even more illiterate than they would be without our help.

That's interesting. In finnish, they are pronounces like the this:
teh
ou
veh
kuksos-veh (double v)

I don't think the letter "w" is used much in finnish.

[iLikebeer]

Originally Posted by BlueSky

Not to answer your enquiry, iLikebeer, but I'm taking this op to say that I hate the letter W.

Every letter in the alphabet is one tiny ol' syllable until you get to w, and then it's 3 syllables...not 1, not 2, but 3 dumbass syllables.

I wish that internet inventor guy could have forseen the awkwardness of saying double-u, double-u, double-u [whatever] dot com and used it a more user friendly letter instead.

How about i i i [whatever] dot com. Or d d d [whatever] dot com. That one just sails out the lips and sounds kind of musical to boot.

I hate the letter W. It should be pronounced wee or wa or wo.

lol, i agree completely! when i was thinking about this the other day, I realized I'm not even absolutely sure of the correct way to say the letter w. I've heard it so many different ways. Is it in fact pronounced "double u"?

I look forward to hearing what our 2 cunning and brilliant linguists know of the subject. And thanks Aristotles, I wasn't sure if it was just an English/French thing or if most of the other Eurocentric languages shared the "double v."

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by iLikebeer

Hopefully someone can answer this for me, it's been bugging me lately.
The letter "w". "Double u" as it's pronounced in English. Hmm. Okay, I know in older English or Latin they wrote "u"s as "v"s, but did they still have "u"s, and if so, how did they distinguish the two?

Originally, the two letters were the same — both pronounced as [u]. In English, the sound taken by W was commonly taken by a letter called wynn (it looked a bit like a P), though W was also used. Later on, as pronunciations changed, V came to have the consonant sound we give it, and U began to emerge as a distinct letter to indicate when the character was being used as a vowel. Eventually, W came to replace wynn as the character for the English [w] sound. That's my understanding, anyway.

Originally Posted by iLikebeer

So we call it a "double u" uu (kind of similar to the curvy "w" some people write) in English and they call it a "double v" in French. How did such a basic mistranslation happen there when the alphabet went to English? French is a romantic language, but Romans and William the Conquerer French people conquered England at different points. Is the difference in "double u" and "double v" because of different time periods when the languages were created and what the letters looked like at the time?

As pointed out above, they weren't originally different letters. The name apparently comes from a time when they weren't distinct.

[iLikebeer]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Originally, the two letters were the same — both pronounced as [u]. In English, the sound taken by W was commonly taken by a letter called wynn (it looked a bit like a P), though W was also used. Later on, as pronunciations changed, V came to have the consonant sound we give it, and U began to emerge as a distinct letter to indicate when the character was being used as a vowel. To my understanding, W (along with things like "th") came into popularity in English because of the printing press, which didn't have wynn or thorn or eth. That's my understanding, anyway.


As pointed out above, they weren't originally different letters. The name apparently comes from a time when they weren't distinct.

Avvesome! Thank you so much, that's been bugging me waaaay more than it should have.

[Chuckit]

By the way, I corrected my post above. I went to check, because I wasn't sure if I had the timeline on "W" right, and wynn went out of popularity before Gutenberg. Just for accuracy's sake. Apparently thorn and eth were the press's victims, but W just won out.

[iLikebeer]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

By the way, I corrected my post above. I went to check, because I wasn't sure if I had the timeline on "W" right, and wynn went out of popularity before Gutenberg. Just for accuracy's sake. Apparently thorn and eth were the press's victims, but W just won out.

Hmmm, what you say makes sense and is close to what I expected. But thinking about it more, it still doesn't explain why it got the pronunciation of "double u" or "double v" so much and why it's different over the 2 geographical areas. Why not just call it Wynn if that's the sound of the letter it descended from. The more I think of "w", the less I like it. I'm with Bluesky on this, down with w!

[Chuckit]

It didn't descend from wynn — wynn looked more like a P than anything else. W descended from V. It was yet another variant of V used to indicate a consonant sound similar to the [u] sound of V.

And I guess you may as well ask why some people say "zee" and some say "zed" within the same language. Different places, different words.

[Doofy]

Ooo... Can't let an opportunity for an 80's hair metal mention pass... ...so here goes:

[volcano]

Originally Posted by BlueSky

Not to answer your enquiry, iLikebeer, but I'm taking this op to say that I hate the letter W.

Every letter in the alphabet is one tiny ol' syllable until you get to w, and then it's 3 syllables...not 1, not 2, but 3 dumbass syllables.

I wish that internet inventor guy could have forseen the awkwardness of saying double-u, double-u, double-u [whatever] dot com and used it a more user friendly letter instead.

How about i i i [whatever] dot com. Or d d d [whatever] dot com. That one just sails out the lips and sounds kind of musical to boot.

I hate the letter W. It should be pronounced wee or wa or wo.

Can you imagine?

Visit my website: wee wee wee [dot] changingpronunciation [dot] com

"wa wa wa" would be just as amusing.

[BlueSky]

Originally Posted by volcano

Can you imagine?

Visit my website: wee wee wee [dot] changingpronunciation [dot] com

"wa wa wa" would be just as amusing.

Or woo woo woo dot threestooges dot com.