One of the few things I remember from my French classes in high school was that the letter is called “double V” in that language. Why did English opt for the “U” instead?
You can hear the French pronunciation here if you’re unfamiliar with it:
https://www.frenchlearner.com/pronunciation/french-alphabet/
V and W are right next to each other in alphabetical order, which seems to lend further credence to the idea that it should be “Double V” and not “Double U”. In fact, the letter U immediately precedes V, so the difference is highlighted in real-time as you go through the alphabet:
- …
- U
- V
- W
- X
- Y
- Z
It’s obviously not at all important in the grand scheme of things, but I’m just curious why we went the way we did!
Cheers!
well, okay, so:
U, V, and W are all descended from the same letter in Latin. V and W are the consonate versions of that ur-letter and U is the vowel version.
But W is much closer to the remaining vowel sound: We could spell “whiskey” as “uiskey” without really changing the pronuncuation, for example.
So despite the glyph, it’s much closer to a U than a V; it’s the U that saw glyphic differentiation even though it’s V that saw phonic differentiation.
So to put it in plain words:
The English are an illiterate bunch of alcoholics who base their entire language on the way it’s pronounced when you’re in the pub.
While the French are a stuck up bunch of pretend aristocrats who based their entire language on the scripts of the court.
Thank you. That was helpful
“uiskey”
That is actually very close to the original Irish words: uisce beatha (ish-kuh ba-ha), meaning “water of life”.
Notably ‘uisce’ is just the word for ‘water’, which tracks.
The Water of Life features in lots of fairy tales. Is that what is being referred to? Is Water of Death another name for an alcohol?
The Water of Life features in lots of fairy tales. Is that what is being referred to?
Likely. Alcohol, in many cultures had a spiritual/religious characterization. We literally have an ancient Egyptian beer recipe because it was written into a hymn praising Ninkasi, a Sumerian goddess of beer.
Is Water of Death another name for an alcohol?
That’s a good question. It’s Fernet (/s).
I do not actually know that. I would suspect that it would be another substance. Maybe an acid or toxin.
You know how the Romans wrote U? V.
Like J is a variant of I, U is a variant of V. Julius Caesar would have written his name IVLIVS
In some languages, especially English, the shapes were used interchangeably until well after the invention of the printing press. There are old, modern English dictionaries in existence where you’ll find words with “i” and “j” sorted in the “wrong” order or intermixed, and likewise for “u” and “v” for precisely this reason.
The letter w was born during that mixed up time, and so it got the double-u name, despite the fact that the shape doesn’t seem to match any more.
(For more fun, look up the letter wynn, “Ƿ” which if it had survived into Middle English, might be what we’d be using instead.)
An example of the u|v mixup people can look at the Slovenian language.
They have the v where other languages have a u, but they say it like a u.
example: automobile vs avtomobil
The 2nd Slovenian in this thread, stuff is getting interesting.
When I was first teaching my son the alphabet, we got to “W” and, before I could say it, he called it “two vees!” It was so cute.
I write my "w"s like “uu”. With curves.
Must make it challenging to express “uwu.”
UuuU
Zoidberg!
𝓊𝓌𝓊 :3
That’s how you write it in cursive. You know for us that are old enough to remember what cursive was.
“uu” ends on a down stroke. W ends on an upstroke, just like the difference between u and v.
Not just cursive; lower case “W” is often written uu. It just depends on the style of the writer.
Whats the keyboard shortcut for that?
What do you mean “old enough to remember what cursive was”
How else are people writing
Print, because we use ballpoints instead of fountain pens, unlike a Luddite.
Part of the reason cursive was dropped is that ballpoints require more hand pressure to write with- you’re gouging the paper to make the little ball roll.
Ballpoint pens are neater and simply better in most respects. The smooth gliding action in a fountain makes cursive easy, fast and with practice, elegant.
But you can’t do that for as long with print characters- it’ll cause hand cramps after a while.
Which, also, we now type or tap out our documents with print being adequate for everything except… uh… artistic expression?
Schools only have so much time to teach, including yet another form of handwriting means excluding other things.
Cursive was dropped because everyone uses computers and phones now, almost nobody bothers to write with a pen at all beyond signing their name on government or corporate documents
cursive’s decline began well before computers, though. around the time ballpoints became common and dominant. which they were more consistent, convenient and significantly less messy (ever refill a fountain pen? they also tended to leak. A lot.)
when I was learning it, the teachers explicitly stated that we’d never actually use it. it’s had this weird cult following of people insisting its some how useful or whatever. It’s about as useful as a slide rule, or clay tablets.
FWIW, I still take notes by hand rather than computer, even if I have my computer out. but it’s easier to add sketches or figures or whatever. But yeah, for actual communication, it’s digital.
It may be a country difference
Schools still teach cursive in mine
Schools in my country also recommend not using ballpoint pens
In the states, the question is largely left to individual states. It was dropped from common core (the federal standards that are… laughable.)
It’s harmful except that schools have a fairly limited instructional time and teaching one thing excludes another.
In my experience, a lot of the people that insist cursive is necessary are people that want to exclude certain things.
Schools do teach, and once students are out of elementary school they never write a letter of cursive again. So in effect, it could’ve been not taught at all.
I don’t remember the last time I wrote anything by hand tbh
Someone changed the font.
Fun fact, in Italian “w” is sometimes referred to as “doppia v” which is “double v”.
Same in Swedish! “dubbel v”
The same in Spanish
German as well
What? In German ‘w’ is
[]and ‘v’ is[].Never heard it.
French, too
This is nvts. N. V. T. S.
I am not 100% sure of the answer (I am sure there are websites where this is explained), but I am reasonably sure it has to do with the fact that V and U used to not be distinct letters, but variations of the same letter.
I find both of those names silly, I like the fact that my first language (German) doesn’t call any letter “double” anything.
But we have Eszett
(s + z = ß)
which I usually call scharfes S
just after 1600 the letters u an v switched. So if you read something written in 1590 it would use words like ‘haue’ (have) and heauie (heavy). This was two different unrelated switches somewhat seperated in time not an actual trade.
A lower case w in handwriting is more uu shaped, at least.
With less cursive being taught and used, this association will eventually disappear. But yes, despite it not being where the letter name came from, growing up I always thought of the appears of w in cursive writing as evidence it is connected more with u than v.
Not even talking about cursive. Regular handwritten lowercase w’s are just two u’s connected together.
Not where I’m from. Looks like a shorter version of the capital letter.
Here’s a worksheet that shows how I learned to hand write w without cursive.
uwu
OwO
I may be wrong about the actual reason for this - as ‘double V’ is also quite common - and it may just end up being some kind of ‘well when the printing press came to England’ thing, but:
In the classical Latin alphabet, the letter ‘V’ was not actually representative of what we today recognise as the /u/ sound (or its variants). It was in fact the written form of the /u/ sound (and related variants). So when the W was introduced to the English alphabet, I guess it was indeed a ‘double /u/‘.
It actually kinda makes sense. Two sounds that a U commonly makes are “OO” like in “yule” and “UH” like in “just”. If you say “OO-UH” close enough together it makes the sound of a W.
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The letter “W” is called “double U” because the Normans invented it by combining two pointed capital letters to represent the sound “w” in Anglo-Saxon words after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. The name “double U” still indicates how the letter was created.
Before the Norman Conquest, the Latin letter “V” was used to represent both the “v” and “w” sounds. The Anglo-Saxons created a separate character called “wen” to represent the “w” sound. After the Norman Conquest, the Normans combined two pointed capital letters to create the “W” to represent the “w” sound in Anglo-Saxon words.
FWIW Spanish has both, depending on the dialect. I grew up saying doble-u, but I know other countries say doble-ve
