W
Encyclopedia
W is the 23rd letter
in the basic modern Latin alphabet
.
In other Germanic languages
, including German
, its pronunciation is similar or identical to that of English V
. In Spanish
, it is doble ve or uve doble,In American
Spanish, it is doble ve, similar regional variations exist in other Spanish-speaking countries and in French
double vé, both literally "double vee".
The sounds /w/ (spelled with ‹V›) and /b/ (spelled ‹B›) of Classical Latin
developed into a bilabial fricative
/β/ between vowels in Early Medieval Latin
. Therefore, ‹V› no longer represented adequately the labial-velar approximant
sound /w/ of Germanic phonology.
The Germanic /w/ phoneme was therefore written as ‹vv› or ‹uu› (‹u
› and ‹v
› becoming distinct only by the Early Modern period) by the 7th or 8th century by the earliest writers of Old English and Old High German
. Gothic
, by contrast, simply used a letter based on the Greek Υ
for the same sound.
It is from this ‹uu› digraph
that the modern name "double U" derives.
The digraph was commonly used in the spelling of Old High German, but only sporadically in Old English, where the /w/ sound was usually represented by the runic wynn
.
In early Middle English
, following the 11th-century Norman Conquest
, ‹uu› gained popularity and by 1300 it had taken wynn's place in common use.
Modern English orthography has thus remained historically consistent with the early scribal orthography of the Brythonic languages
(Welsh
, Cornish
, Breton
) ultimately derived from Latin
, and distinct from its near continental neighbours, such as French
and German
where the 'double vee' is used.
Scribal realization of the digraph could look like a pair of Vs whose branches crossed in the middle. An obsolete, cursive form found in the nineteenth century in both English and German was in the form of an "n" whose rightmost branch curved around as in a cursive "v".
The shift from the ligature ‹vv› to the distinct letter ‹w› is thus gradual, and is only apparent in abecedaria
, explicit listings of all individual letters. It was probably considered a separate letter by the 14th century in both Middle English
and Middle German
orthography, although it remained an outsider not really considered part of the Latin alphabet proper, as expressed by Valentin Ickelsamer in the 16th century,
who complained that
In Middle High German
(and possibly already in late Old High German), the West Germanic phoneme /w/ became realized as [v]; this is why the German ‹w› today represents that sound. There is no phonological distinction between [w] and [v] in German and the [w] sound remains heard allophonically for ‹w›, especially in the cluster ‹schw›, besides [kw] for ‹qu›.
Though modern German dialects
generally have only [v] for West Germanic [w], some Bavarian dialects preserve a "light" initial [w] in words like wuoz, Standard German weiß [vaɪs] '[I] know' (cf. English wit). The Classical Latin [β] is heard in the Southern German greeting Servus ('hello' or 'goodbye').
In Dutch
it became a labiodental approximant
/ʋ/ (with the exception of words with -‹eeuw›, which have /eːβ/, or other diphthongs containing -‹uw›). Dialectally, in many Dutch speaking areas, such as Flanders
and Suriname
, the /β/ pronunciation is used at all times.
, German
, Low German, Dutch
, Frisian, Welsh
, Cornish
, Breton
, Walloon
, Polish
, Kashubian
, Sorbian
and Resian
use W in native words. English uses W to represent /w/, German, Polish and Kashubian use it for the voiced labiodental fricative
/v/ (with Polish and related Kashubian using Ł for /w/), and Dutch uses it for /w/ or /ʋ/. Unlike its use in other languages, the letter is used in Welsh
and Cornish
to represent the vowel /u/ as well as the related approximant consonant /w/. English also contains a number of words beginning with a W that is silent
in most dialects before a R, remaining from usage in Anglo-Saxon
in which the W was pronounced: wreak, wrap, wreck, wrench, wroth, wrinkle, etc. (Certain dialects of Scottish English
still distinguish this digraph.)
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, /w/ is used for the voiced labial-velar approximant
, probably based on English.
In Finnish
, ‹W› is seen as a variant of ‹V› and not a separate letter. It is however recognised and maintained in the spelling of some old names, reflecting an earlier German spelling standard, and in some modern loan words. In all cases it is pronounced /v/.
In Danish, Norwegian and Swedish
, ‹W› is always pronounced as /v/, and as such, it is named double-v and not double-u. In these languages, the letter only exists in old names, loanwords and foreign words. (Foreign words are distinguished from loanwords by having a significantly lower level of integration in the language.) The letter was officially introduced in the Danish and Swedish alphabets as late as 1980 and 2006, respectively, despite having been in use for much longer. It was recognized since the conception of modern Norwegian, with the earliest official orthography rules of 1907. ‹W› was earlier seen as a variant of ‹V›, and ‹W› as a letter (double-v) is still commonly replaced by ‹V› in speech (e.g. www being pronounced as vvv, WHO as VHO, etc.) The two letters were sorted as equals before ‹W› was officially recognized, and that practice that is still recommended when sorting names in Sweden. In modern slang, some native speakers may pronounce ‹W› more closely to the origin of the loanword than the official /v/ pronunciation.
In the alphabets of most modern Romance languages (excepting far northern French and Walloon
), W is used mostly in foreign names and words recently borrowed (le week-end, il watt, el kiwi). When a spelling for /w/ in a native word is needed, a spelling from the native alphabet, such as V, U, or OU, can be used instead.
In the Cyrillic alphabet used for the Belarusian language
, ‹Ў› is pronounced like English /w/.
The Japanese language
uses "W", pronounced /daburu/, as an ideogram meaning "double".
In Arabic
, "W" is transliterated using the penultimate letter of the alphabet, و (waw)
.
W is also the symbol for the chemical element tungsten
, after its German name, Wolfram.
letter name with more than one syllable, except for the occasionally used, though somewhat archaic, "œ
" (its name is pronounced similar to "ethel"), and the archaic pronunciation of Z
izzard. The initialism www for the World Wide Web
thus, perhaps ironically, has three times as many syllables as the full name.
Some speakers therefore shorten the name "double u" into "dub" only; for example, University of Washington
, University of Wyoming
and University of Western Australia
are all known colloquially as "U Dub", and the automobile company Volkswagen
, abbreviated VW, is sometimes pronounced "V-Dub". The fact that many website URLs still require a "www." prefix has likewise given rise to a shortened version of the original, three-syllable pronunciation. W and H
are also the only English letters whose names are not pronounced with any of the sounds that the letter typically makes. Many others, however, prefer to pronounce the w as dub-u, reducing it to two syllables. For example, www would be six syllables rather than nine, being pronounced dub-u dub-u dub-u. The common method of pronouncing dub-u would almost be unmistakably double-u.
George W. Bush
has been given the nickname "Dubya", after the colloquial pronunciation of W in Texas
.
1 and all encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
Letter (alphabet)
A letter is a grapheme in an alphabetic system of writing, such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants. Letters compose phonemes and each phoneme represents a phone in the spoken form of the language....
in the basic modern Latin alphabet
Basic modern Latin alphabet
The International Organization for Standardization basic Latin alphabet consists of the following 26 letters:By the 1960s it became apparent to the computer and telecommunications industries in the First World that a non-proprietary method of encoding characters was needed...
.
In other Germanic languages
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
, including German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, its pronunciation is similar or identical to that of English V
V
V is the twenty-second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Letter:The letter V comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details....
. In Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, it is doble ve or uve doble,In American
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
Spanish, it is doble ve, similar regional variations exist in other Spanish-speaking countries and in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
double vé, both literally "double vee".
History
Classical Latin
Classical Latin in simplest terms is the socio-linguistic register of the Latin language regarded by the enfranchised and empowered populations of the late Roman republic and the Roman empire as good Latin. Most writers during this time made use of it...
developed into a bilabial fricative
Voiced bilabial fricative
-See also:* List of phonetics topics...
/β/ between vowels in Early Medieval Latin
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...
. Therefore, ‹V› no longer represented adequately the labial-velar approximant
Voiced labial-velar approximant
The voiced labiovelar approximant is a type of consonantal sound, used in certain spoken languages, including English. It is the sound denoted by the letter "w" in the English alphabet; likewise, the symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent...
sound /w/ of Germanic phonology.
The Germanic /w/ phoneme was therefore written as ‹vv› or ‹uu› (‹u
U
U is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details....
› and ‹v
V
V is the twenty-second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Letter:The letter V comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details....
› becoming distinct only by the Early Modern period) by the 7th or 8th century by the earliest writers of Old English and Old High German
Old High German
The term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of...
. Gothic
Gothic alphabet
The Gothic alphabet is an alphabet for writing the Gothic language, created in the 4th century by Ulfilas for the purpose of translating the Christian Bible....
, by contrast, simply used a letter based on the Greek Υ
Upsilon
Upsilon is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 400. It is derived from the Phoenician waw. The name of the letter is pronounced in Modern Greek, and in English , , or...
for the same sound.
It is from this ‹uu› digraph
Digraph (orthography)
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
that the modern name "double U" derives.
The digraph was commonly used in the spelling of Old High German, but only sporadically in Old English, where the /w/ sound was usually represented by the runic wynn
Wynn
Wynn is a letter of the Old English alphabet, where it is used to represent the sound ....
.
In early Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
, following the 11th-century Norman Conquest
Norman conquest of England
The Norman conquest of England began on 28 September 1066 with the invasion of England by William, Duke of Normandy. William became known as William the Conqueror after his victory at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066, defeating King Harold II of England...
, ‹uu› gained popularity and by 1300 it had taken wynn's place in common use.
Modern English orthography has thus remained historically consistent with the early scribal orthography of the Brythonic languages
Brythonic languages
The Brythonic or Brittonic languages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family, the other being Goidelic. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning an indigenous Briton as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael...
(Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
, Cornish
Cornish language
Cornish is a Brythonic Celtic language and a recognised minority language of the United Kingdom. Along with Welsh and Breton, it is directly descended from the ancient British language spoken throughout much of Britain before the English language came to dominate...
, Breton
Breton language
Breton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...
) ultimately derived from Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, and distinct from its near continental neighbours, such as French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
where the 'double vee' is used.
Scribal realization of the digraph could look like a pair of Vs whose branches crossed in the middle. An obsolete, cursive form found in the nineteenth century in both English and German was in the form of an "n" whose rightmost branch curved around as in a cursive "v".
The shift from the ligature ‹vv› to the distinct letter ‹w› is thus gradual, and is only apparent in abecedaria
Abecedarium
An abecedarium is an inscription consisting of the letters of an alphabet, almost always listed in order. Typically, abecedaria are practice exercises....
, explicit listings of all individual letters. It was probably considered a separate letter by the 14th century in both Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
and Middle German
Middle German
In linguistics, Middle German can refer to a few variants of the German language:* Middle Low German , the northern dialects in the 11th-15th centuries...
orthography, although it remained an outsider not really considered part of the Latin alphabet proper, as expressed by Valentin Ickelsamer in the 16th century,
who complained that
- "Poor w is so infamous and unknown that many barely know either its name or its shape, not those who aspire to being Latinists, as they have no need of it, nor do the Germans, not even the schoolmasters, know what to do with it or how to call it; some call it we, [... others] call it uu, [...] the Swabians call it auwawau"
In Middle High German
Middle High German
Middle High German , abbreviated MHG , is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. It is preceded by Old High German and followed by Early New High German...
(and possibly already in late Old High German), the West Germanic phoneme /w/ became realized as [v]; this is why the German ‹w› today represents that sound. There is no phonological distinction between [w] and [v] in German and the [w] sound remains heard allophonically for ‹w›, especially in the cluster ‹schw›, besides [kw] for ‹qu›.
Though modern German dialects
German dialects
German dialect is dominated by the geographical spread of the High German consonant shift, and the dialect continuum that connects the German with the Dutch language.-German dialects in relation to varieties of standard German:...
generally have only [v] for West Germanic [w], some Bavarian dialects preserve a "light" initial [w] in words like wuoz, Standard German weiß [vaɪs] '[I] know' (cf. English wit). The Classical Latin [β] is heard in the Southern German greeting Servus ('hello' or 'goodbye').
In Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
it became a labiodental approximant
Labiodental approximant
The labiodental approximant is a type of consonantal sound, similar to an English double-u pronounced with the teeth and lips held in the position used to articulate the letter vee, used in some spoken languages...
/ʋ/ (with the exception of words with -‹eeuw›, which have /eːβ/, or other diphthongs containing -‹uw›). Dialectally, in many Dutch speaking areas, such as Flanders
Flanders
Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...
and Suriname
Suriname
Suriname , officially the Republic of Suriname , is a country in northern South America. It borders French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, Brazil to the south, and on the north by the Atlantic Ocean. Suriname was a former colony of the British and of the Dutch, and was previously known as...
, the /β/ pronunciation is used at all times.
Usage
In Europe, there are only a few languages that use W in native words and all are located in a central-western European zone between Cornwall and Poland. EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Low German, Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, Frisian, Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
, Cornish
Cornish language
Cornish is a Brythonic Celtic language and a recognised minority language of the United Kingdom. Along with Welsh and Breton, it is directly descended from the ancient British language spoken throughout much of Britain before the English language came to dominate...
, Breton
Breton language
Breton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...
, Walloon
Walloon language
Walloon is a Romance language which was spoken as a primary language in large portions of the Walloon Region of Belgium and some villages of Northern France until the middle of the 20th century. It belongs to the langue d'oïl language family, whose most prominent member is the French language...
, Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, Kashubian
Kashubian language
Kashubian or Cassubian is one of the Lechitic languages, a subgroup of the Slavic languages....
, Sorbian
Sorbian languages
The Sorbian languages are classified under the Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. They are the native languages of the Sorbs, a Slavic minority in the Lusatia region of eastern Germany. Historically the language has also been known as Wendish or Lusatian. Their collective ISO 639-2 code...
and Resian
Resian dialect
The Resian dialect is a distinct dialect of Slovene spoken in the Resia Valley, Province of Udine, Italy, close to the border with Slovenia...
use W in native words. English uses W to represent /w/, German, Polish and Kashubian use it for the voiced labiodental fricative
Voiced labiodental fricative
The voiced labiodental fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is v....
/v/ (with Polish and related Kashubian using Ł for /w/), and Dutch uses it for /w/ or /ʋ/. Unlike its use in other languages, the letter is used in Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
and Cornish
Cornish language
Cornish is a Brythonic Celtic language and a recognised minority language of the United Kingdom. Along with Welsh and Breton, it is directly descended from the ancient British language spoken throughout much of Britain before the English language came to dominate...
to represent the vowel /u/ as well as the related approximant consonant /w/. English also contains a number of words beginning with a W that is silent
Silent letter
In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that, in a particular word, does not correspond to any sound in the word's pronunciation...
in most dialects before a R, remaining from usage in Anglo-Saxon
Old English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
in which the W was pronounced: wreak, wrap, wreck, wrench, wroth, wrinkle, etc. (Certain dialects of Scottish English
Scottish English
Scottish English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. It may or may not be considered distinct from the Scots language. It is always considered distinct from Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language....
still distinguish this digraph.)
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, /w/ is used for the voiced labial-velar approximant
Voiced labial-velar approximant
The voiced labiovelar approximant is a type of consonantal sound, used in certain spoken languages, including English. It is the sound denoted by the letter "w" in the English alphabet; likewise, the symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent...
, probably based on English.
In Finnish
Finnish alphabet
The Finnish alphabet is based on the Latin script, and especially the Swedish alphabet. Officially it comprises 28 letters:A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, X, Y, Z, Å, Ä, Ö...
, ‹W› is seen as a variant of ‹V› and not a separate letter. It is however recognised and maintained in the spelling of some old names, reflecting an earlier German spelling standard, and in some modern loan words. In all cases it is pronounced /v/.
In Danish, Norwegian and Swedish
Swedish alphabet
Modern Swedish is written with a 29-letter Latin alphabet:Prior to the 13th edition of Svenska Akademiens ordlista in 2006, the letters and were collated together....
, ‹W› is always pronounced as /v/, and as such, it is named double-v and not double-u. In these languages, the letter only exists in old names, loanwords and foreign words. (Foreign words are distinguished from loanwords by having a significantly lower level of integration in the language.) The letter was officially introduced in the Danish and Swedish alphabets as late as 1980 and 2006, respectively, despite having been in use for much longer. It was recognized since the conception of modern Norwegian, with the earliest official orthography rules of 1907. ‹W› was earlier seen as a variant of ‹V›, and ‹W› as a letter (double-v) is still commonly replaced by ‹V› in speech (e.g. www being pronounced as vvv, WHO as VHO, etc.) The two letters were sorted as equals before ‹W› was officially recognized, and that practice that is still recommended when sorting names in Sweden. In modern slang, some native speakers may pronounce ‹W› more closely to the origin of the loanword than the official /v/ pronunciation.
In the alphabets of most modern Romance languages (excepting far northern French and Walloon
Walloon language
Walloon is a Romance language which was spoken as a primary language in large portions of the Walloon Region of Belgium and some villages of Northern France until the middle of the 20th century. It belongs to the langue d'oïl language family, whose most prominent member is the French language...
), W is used mostly in foreign names and words recently borrowed (le week-end, il watt, el kiwi). When a spelling for /w/ in a native word is needed, a spelling from the native alphabet, such as V, U, or OU, can be used instead.
In the Cyrillic alphabet used for the Belarusian language
Belarusian language
The Belarusian language , sometimes referred to as White Russian or White Ruthenian, is the language of the Belarusian people...
, ‹Ў› is pronounced like English /w/.
The Japanese language
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
uses "W", pronounced /daburu/, as an ideogram meaning "double".
In Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, "W" is transliterated using the penultimate letter of the alphabet, و (waw)
Waw (letter)
Waw is the sixth letter of the Northwest Semitic family of scripts, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic ....
.
W is also the symbol for the chemical element tungsten
Tungsten
Tungsten , also known as wolfram , is a chemical element with the chemical symbol W and atomic number 74.A hard, rare metal under standard conditions when uncombined, tungsten is found naturally on Earth only in chemical compounds. It was identified as a new element in 1781, and first isolated as...
, after its German name, Wolfram.
Name
"Double U" is the only EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
letter name with more than one syllable, except for the occasionally used, though somewhat archaic, "œ
Œ
Œ œŒ is a Latin alphabet grapheme, a ligature of o and e. In medieval and early modern Latin, it was used to represent the Greek diphthong οι, a usage which continues in English and French...
" (its name is pronounced similar to "ethel"), and the archaic pronunciation of Z
Z
Z is the twenty-sixth and final letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Name and pronunciation:In most dialects of English, the letter's name is zed , reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta but in American English, its name is zee , deriving from a late 17th century English dialectal...
izzard. The initialism www for the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
thus, perhaps ironically, has three times as many syllables as the full name.
Some speakers therefore shorten the name "double u" into "dub" only; for example, University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
, University of Wyoming
University of Wyoming
The University of Wyoming is a land-grant university located in Laramie, Wyoming, situated on Wyoming's high Laramie Plains, at an elevation of 7,200 feet , between the Laramie and Snowy Range mountains. It is known as UW to people close to the university...
and University of Western Australia
University of Western Australia
The University of Western Australia was established by an Act of the Western Australian Parliament in February 1911, and began teaching students for the first time in 1913. It is the oldest university in the state of Western Australia and the only university in the state to be a member of the...
are all known colloquially as "U Dub", and the automobile company Volkswagen
Volkswagen
Volkswagen is a German automobile manufacturer and is the original and biggest-selling marque of the Volkswagen Group, which now also owns the Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, SEAT, and Škoda marques and the truck manufacturer Scania.Volkswagen means "people's car" in German, where it is...
, abbreviated VW, is sometimes pronounced "V-Dub". The fact that many website URLs still require a "www." prefix has likewise given rise to a shortened version of the original, three-syllable pronunciation. W and H
H
H .) is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The Semitic letter ⟨ח⟩ most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative . The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts....
are also the only English letters whose names are not pronounced with any of the sounds that the letter typically makes. Many others, however, prefer to pronounce the w as dub-u, reducing it to two syllables. For example, www would be six syllables rather than nine, being pronounced dub-u dub-u dub-u. The common method of pronouncing dub-u would almost be unmistakably double-u.
George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
has been given the nickname "Dubya", after the colloquial pronunciation of W in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
.
Computing codes
| character | W | w | ||
| Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER W | LATIN SMALL LETTER W | ||
| character encoding | decimal | hex | decimal | hex |
| Unicode Unicode Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems... |
87 | 0057 | 119 | 0077 |
| UTF-8 UTF-8 UTF-8 is a multibyte character encoding for Unicode. Like UTF-16 and UTF-32, UTF-8 can represent every character in the Unicode character set. Unlike them, it is backward-compatible with ASCII and avoids the complications of endianness and byte order marks... |
87 | 57 | 119 | 77 |
| Numeric character reference Numeric character reference A numeric character reference is a common markup construct used in SGML and other SGML-related markup languages such as HTML and XML. It consists of a short sequence of characters that, in turn, represent a single character from the Universal Character Set of Unicode... |
W | W | w | w |
| EBCDIC EBCDIC Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code is an 8-bit character encoding used mainly on IBM mainframe and IBM midrange computer operating systems.... family |
230 | E6 | 166 | A6 |
| ASCII ASCII The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text... 1 |
87 | 57 | 119 | 77 |
1 and all encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.