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Finnish 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 Frak
by jltsiren 6d ago
Finnish 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.
- Sharlin 6d agoYes, thanks for the addition! I though about mentioning the link to Swedish W but wasn’t fully sure about the details.
- OskarS 5d agoI remember vividly being so annoyed when they added W to the Swedish alphabet in 2006. The alphabet I learned to recite in first grade is suddenly wrong?! I still don't say it correctly unless I concentrate, if I have to recite the alphabet, I always skip over W. The argument at the time was that no "native" Swedish words are spelled with a W, so it shouldn't be part of our alphabet. However, but 2006, enough loan-words had been imported to Swedish with W's (like "webben", "the web") and it was in enough brand names (like "Volkswagen") that it should be included. But I'm still mad about it! This is my tiny ridiculous hill to die on, W should not be part of the Swedish alphabet!