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A Necessary History of the Oddest Letter: W
- neuroelectron 13d ago(U ω U)
- AnodicElegy 13d agoThe most irritating way in which W is odd is that it requires three syllables to name, while all the other English letters are monosyllabic. This leads to many unfortunate situations where it takes substantially longer to say the acronym of a title than to say the title itself. Take for example, the World Wildlife Fund, which contains four syllables (or maybe five, depending how you pronounce "wild") and whose acronym contains seven. Given how many acronyms contain the word "World" in particular, this is clearly a massive inefficiency in the way we go about our lives. I've started a campaign to rename it something reasonable like "woo" or "woe", but neither Reuters nor the AP seem particularly interested.
- andsoitis 13d ago> I've started a campaign to rename it something reasonable like "woo" or "woe", but neither Reuters nor the AP seem particularly interested. I support your campaign. Other candidates: wa, weh, wu
- MrBuddyCasino 13d agoIn German its „weh“. But then V is „phau“, so its not as easy to confuse as in English.
- BoorishBears 13d agoWhy not simple, W: making a mouth shape as-if to say "What", then sharply exhale a puff of air instead
- jfengel 13d agoIn German it's called "vay". That's brief, and gets a few million people on your side.
- anamexis 13d agoCounterpoint: Ypsilon.
- k__ 13d agoFair, but Y isn't used much in German.
- Ylpertnodi 12d agoGermany.
- anon_cow1111 13d agoStupid, but related amusing nostalgia: By default. Unreal Tournament 2003/4 used to have in-game text chat that would use the "Microsoft Sam" voice synthesizer to read player messages aloud to everyone in the room... MS Sam took so long to pronounce the letter "W /DoubleYou" that you could just go into a server and drop a 512 character "W-bomb" and leave. Everyone in the room would have to listen to several minutes of dubbayou's assuming they never turned off the voice feature. (I miss those days of genuinely annoying but still apolitical random trolling)
- protocolture 12d agoThe gentleman who hosted the LAN party, whose mother had her bedroom right above his PC, with speakers blaring, as we got Microsoft Sam to spell out countless insults and incredulous things while he complained "Cmon guys" never did host again.
- nkrisc 13d agoOr, of course, WWW (world-wide web) where each word of the acronym is itself a single syllable. This means the acronym is 6 syllables longer if you were speaking it.
- bluebarbet 12d agoIndeed. This has to rank as one of the worst branding mistakes in history. All TBL had to do was call the subdomain "web" but instead he went for the infuriatingly fussy and tongue-tying "www".
- b112 12d agoIt was a different time. Everything from movies to stories at the bus stop were longer, more relaxed, less rushed. www probably didn't seem like a big deal at the time. Alternates seem... bad. Instead of 'double u', you could say 'sexta-u', but that could lead to a slap in the face. Possibly the same for sextuple-u, which sounds like someone's going to tackle you then do some strange all over you. If it wasn't for U and V switching in the middle ages, it'd be like the french language which says 'double v', and then 'sexta-v' could be OK.
- JadeNB 12d ago> It was a different time. Everything from movies to stories at the bus stop were longer, more relaxed, less rushed. www probably didn't seem like a big deal at the time. Hmm, and yet, though of a different era, we got `cp`, `ls, `mv`, `rm` ....
- PlunderBunny 12d agoIt’s (slightly) easier to type www than web.
- deleted 12d ago[deleted]
- ddingus 12d agoA radio talk show host I really enjoyed came up with this: .'triple double ya site dot gom." You can say that fast and people get it.
- pavlov 13d agoIt’s commonly called “dub” when brevity is called for, as in “dub dub dub” = www. Or is this just a tech industry idiom that I’ve been taking for granted…
- roryirvine 13d agoThough it does make you sound like a boy scout... Wuh works better, imho, though it does tend to degrade into "wuh'uh'uh" when said quickly. The BBC tried very hard in 1994/5 to persuade people to pronounce "http://www." as "hit web" - thankfully, that failed to gain any traction whatsoever.
- fdcjjrvdcg 13d agoI don’t know… I always had a soft spot for “hit web”. Makes it sound so cool. It’s dumb but I quite like it :D
- ButlerianJihad 13d agoWe proposed “dub-three” in accord with a guy who was fighting the Clipper Chip
- williamdclt 12d agowell, never heard that! And hate it, as "dub" does not contain (let alone start with) the sound it refers to
- Izkata 12d agoIt's the first part of its name, "double-u". H doesn't contain its sound either, and G has only one of the two sounds it makes (and it's not the one unique to it).
- ortusdux 13d agoIt's also the only letter that is not used in its own pronunciation. It really breaks the cadence of alphabet books!
- cwnyth 12d agoTechnically, one of the sounds of W is heard at the end of its name, and is seen more clearly in its homophone "yew" (rhymes with ew, shrew, mew, chew, few, Drew, etc.).
- notpushkin 12d agoWikipedia lists ‘C’ as “cee”, but that’s cheating IMO. It’s clearly “see”! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_alphabet#Letter_names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_alphabet#Letter_names
- yongjik 13d agoThe name for "Y" starts with a "w" sound, so why not make it symmetric: let's call "Y" why and "W" yay.
- fdcjjrvdcg 13d agoOk I hate this and I love this. Yay indeed!
- Sharlin 13d agoNot to mention "www", which when pronounced is actually three times longer than its expansion.
- sheept 13d agoFor a native speaker in casual speech, it'll only be at most a bit slower than its expansion because English is stress-timed
- layer8 13d agoYou could shorten it to “sextuple u”.
- b112 12d agoGreat minds think alike, but my concern was that sextuple-u sounds like you're about to tackle someone and do something.
- chuckadams 12d agoPlus it's still cumbersome to say. But I guess "sex-u" is right out.
- dyzone 13d agoW is "double u"
- Razengan 13d agoAnd that's why it's my favorite letter :)
- chrisweekly 13d agoYet its written shape is a double-V.
- deleted 12d ago[deleted]
- thaumasiotes 12d agoThat's easy to explain; U and V are the same letter.
- deleted 12d ago[deleted]
- chrisweekly 12d agoUntrue. Vowel.
- notpushkin 12d agoUoɰel?
- thaumasiotes 12d agoTry looking into the history. The explanation I gave is correct.
- lynndotpy 13d agoThere is precedent among English speakers for "dub" or "dubya". George W. Bush is something referred to as "dubya", for the "W" part. And modern slang "W" or "dubs" as shorthand for "win". "Dubya" fits in the ABC song just as well as double-you, while "dubs" can fit as "dubs and X, Y and Z". You might have better luck with NPR, they assure me that they read every email.
- ButlerianJihad 13d agoThe erstwhile World Wide Wrestling Federation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWF_trademark_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWF_trademark_dispute
- cwnyth 12d agoShould be "wee", and rhymes with B, C, D, G, P, T, V, and (in some dialects) Z.
- Ylpertnodi 12d agoTrying to sing the alphabet song with a 'wee' is hard. Weeeeeeeee, x, y, and I hate British English for teaching me 'zed'.
- adrian_b 12d ago"Whiskey", in the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet (NATO phonetic alphabet), is easier to pronounce than "double u".
- wkjagt 12d agoYou would feel right at home in the way Dutch (and other Germanic languages) name W with just one syllable. V is "vay", W is "way". Except the W (in Dutch at least) sounds closer to a V, just less fricative. Same mouth shape, with the bottom teeth against the upper lip.
- deleted 12d ago[deleted]
- zarzavat 13d agoWould be remiss to not mention W's biopic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg2j7mZ9-2Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg2j7mZ9-2Y
- olexsmir 13d agojust come here to link this video...
- Sharlin 13d agoThe history of W in Finnish is interesting (for some values of "interesting"). Mikael Agricola [1], a Lutheran clergyman, essentially created literary Finnish from scratch in the 1500s (before that, Finnish had existed solely as a spoken, vernacular language, with official business conducted in Swedish (or German), and until the reformation, the language of the Church had of course been Latin). Agricola had to create an alphabet for Finnish, and naturally borrowed heavily from Swedish and, to a lesser extent, German. His orthography was not particularly self-consistent, and for example the /u/ and /v/ phonemes might be written as either "u", "v", or "w" in Agricola's works. For example, the word uusi (/u:si/; "new") was written by him as "wsi", indeed using "w" as a literal "double-u". The /w/ sound did not exist in spoken Finnish. Over time, Finnish became the almost entirely phonetic language that it is now, with letters matching phonemes essentially one-to-one. /u/ was regularized as "u" and /v/ as "v". As /w/ still doesn't exist, the letter "w" is very rarely used, mainly in some surnames as an alternative spelling of "v"; phonebooks used to collate "v" and "w" as the same letter. In loanwords "w" becomes "v" (e.g. "whiskey" -> viski). Finns with a thick accent (see "Rally English" [2]) tend to pronounce the foreign /w/ as /v/ when speaking English, similar to Germans. Today, imitation of Agricola's orthography is the Finnish version of "ye olde English", used for humorous or intensifying effect. For example, the word vanha "old" might be spelled "wanha" in the name of an antiques shop. "Wanha" also used to be a standard "old news" reply on IRC, especially to links that had already been pasted by someone (and this became so annoying on some channels that it became a kick-worthy offense). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikael_Agricola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikael_Agricola [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rally_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rally_English
- jltsiren 12d agoFinnish W is inherently tied to Swedish W. Historically, V and W were the same letter, and they could be used interchangeably. W was generally preferred in Fraktur and V in Antiqua. In the 19th century, the orthography changed to use V everywhere, except in some proper names. This happened a bit earlier in Swedish than in Finnish. And, recently, V and W became separate letters. In 2006 in Swedish and (arguably) in 2022 in Finnish.
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- blauditore 13d agoI first read the title as "oldest letter", and kept waiting for an explanation or twist in the article, getting increasingly confused. I just felt like sharing this, thanks for reading my comment.
- vhantz 12d agoEnglish is at best my 3rd language. I have always found the huge discrepancy between pronunciation and spelling really nonsensical (keep in mind that I even speak French). But this article really helps see all that in a new light. Nothing is a-historical, not even phonetics. Newfound respect for the English language.
- gerdesj 12d agoEnglish isn't the only language that uses the Roman alphabet (which I'm pretty sure is named after the first two Hebrew letters and not old Greek). English is not Hungarian, where each sound has a glyph with a diacritic to adjust to taste (sorry: sound). Well, it sort of does and I recall a Hungarian telling me that. However, I recall noting street names in Budapest and asking about one or two and it turns out that spelling with adjustments (glyh plus diacritcs) breaks down a bit. I'm not enough of an expert but I suspect Hungarian is quite as mad as any other language, at the periphery. Its also rather moot as to when "English" actually arose. I think we can allow roots, in all sorts of, not places ... but times! As this article mentions, we have lost the letters wynn and thorne from English. When you see the words "Ye olde shoppe" (often in the Gothic black letter typeface) note that the Y is actually the letter thorne and ye is pronounced the or thee. It is unlikely that anyone will actually notice!
- yread 12d agoHungarian doesn't have that many letters with diacritic (only 9: á, é, í, ó, ú, ö , ü, ő and ű), they use digraphs (cs, sz,. ..) for some sounds. Maybe they meant Czech (15: á, é, í, ó, ú, ů, ý, č, š, ž, ř, ď, ť, ň, ě)? or Slovak (18: á, é, í, ó, ú, ý, ŕ, ĺ, č, š, ž, dž, ď, ť, ň, ľ, ô, ä)
- ErroneousBosh 12d agoGaelic only has 18 letters (and W isn't one of them) but the vowels have diacritics - grave accents - that mark them as being longer. This makes some things a bit of a nightmare because words can have different meanings based on those sounds, and that can drastically alter things. "Fèis" - "faaysh" - means "festival", "feis" with a short vowel is not a word you'd use in polite company.
- tndibona 12d agoOn another note - Indians often switch the w’s and v’s. I don’t know why. If you’re Indian - try pronouncing victory, whisky, and wonderful.
- frantathefranta 12d agoCzech is my mother tongue and I have regular issues with this too (have been mainly English speaking for the last 10 years). Czech does not have a /w/ sound and it confuses me the other way as well, like you said with "victory".
- pndy 12d agoMy friend from Czechia struggled while pronouncing Polish words including /w/ sound represented by "ł" letter. What I find interesting is that /w/ sound > V západoslovanských jazycích navazuje na praslovanskou nonpalatální souhlásku [ɫ] which is still partially present in the eastern regions of Poland and is associated with sort of "sophisticated" pronunciation used by early 20th century actors - and thus it's also known as "performative ł" or "kresowe ł", or "dark l" in English. It is similar to Arabic "l" present in Allah word.
- zarzavat 12d agoHindi uses the sound /ʋ/ which is a sound with elements of both v and w. This means that to many Indians, v and w are allophonic: they are heard as the same sound. An example of allophony in English is the aspirated /pʰ/ in pin and the unaspirated /p/ in spin, which to a speaker of Hindi and many other languages would be considered two distinct sounds.
- left-struck 12d agoI’ve always wondered what native English speakers get wrong in this way in various other languages. Anyone got any anecdotes?
- tndibona 12d agoI’m not American, but I after living here - I’ve noticed a few. They sometimes say “axe” for “ask”. They fail to enunciate “respiratory” fully - they say “res-pah-tory”. Also, they fail to pronounce the f in fifth - like they say fith. Certain words like “squirrel” tend to get squished into “skwol” while I’m used to pronouncing it in two syllables. I’m trying to think of similar examples. Edit : I now realise that all of the above are incorrect examples in the context of what is being discussed. Pardon me!
- cubez 12d ago[flagged]
- lynx97 12d agoFun fact. You can see that W is kind of the oddball when looking at the Braille alphabet. XYZ used to align with MNO, until W was added as the 23th letter, which breaks the symmetry. ⠁⠃⠉⠙⠑⠋⠛⠓⠊⠚ (abcdefghij) ⠅⠇⠍⠝⠕⠏⠟⠗⠎⠞ (klmnopqrst) ⠥⠧⠺⠭⠽⠵ (uvwxyz)
- Ouman 12d ago[dead]
- ferrule 12d agoAlways found "double-u" ironic for a single letter. At least it's visually distinctive in code, unlike `l` and `1`.
- ithkuil 12d agoI'm surprised this article doesn't mention that classical latin pronunciation actually had V realized as W or U depending on context. Latin didn't have two letters to distinguish V and U. You can still find inscriptions with VVA (modern spelling UVA) Later that sound morphed to a voiced labiodental fricative which is what we think of V now
- wkjagt 12d agoI live in a French speaking part of Canada but am originally from the Netherlands. My name starts with a W (Willem). In Dutch W sounds a lot like a V, just a bit less fricative. When someone asks me how my name is pronounced, and hears me say it, they go "ooohh, so it's pronounced with a V". Sometimes I demonstrate the difference by pronouncing my name with a V and then with a W, but most of the time people don't hear much of a difference, and to them it just sounds like I am pronouncing it with a slightly different V both times. More often though, people have seen my name in its written form before we meet, and since this is a French speaking part of the world, I automatically become Ouilemme.
- pluc 12d agoI have Weimaraners - they have the same problem and it sounds ridiculous with a French W. Braque de Ouais-mar instead of Veimaraner, can't stand it so I call them by their German names. Sorry about your name though, I'll do my part in our area
- deleted 12d ago[deleted]
- waffletower 12d agoI have a Question about the matter of opinion reGarding the oddity of the letter 'W'. What Quickly and Gainfully comes to mind are other letters that combine curvature and rectilinear chanGe which seem to reflect oddity much more saliently than 'W'. Also 'W' arguably is a simple transposition of the letter 'M'. How was 'W' chosen in the face of the complexity and uniqueness it clearly lacks compared to other letters?