More Info on WSimilar Undetermined MusicSearch Artistopia
Biography
Refimprove|date=December 2011pp-move-indef|small=yesTwo other uses|the letterLatin alphabet navbox|uc=W|lc=w W (IPAc-en|icon|'|d|?|b|?l|ju?, IPAc-en|'|d|?|b|?|ju?, IPAc-en|'|d|?|b|?|j|?, or IPAc-en|'|d|?|b|j|?; English alphabet#Letter names|named double-u , plural double-ues )"W" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); ''Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993)Brown & Kiddle (1870) The institutes of grammar, p 19. Double-ues'' is the plural of the name of the letter; the plural of the letter itself is written W's, W s, w's, or w s. is the 23rd letter (alphabet)|letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet .
In other Germanic languages , including German language|German , its pronunciation is similar or identical to that of English V . http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/W#German W: German on Wiktionary In Spanish language|Spanish , it is doble ve or uve doble ,cite web|url= http://www.taringa.net/posts/noticias/7792488/Real-Academia-Espanola-elimina-la-Ch-y-ll-del-alfabeto.html |title=Real Academia Española elimina la Ch y ll del alfabeto |publisher=Taringa& #33; |date=2010-11-05 |accessdate=2011-11-04In Latin America|American Spanish, it is doble ve , similar http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/W#Spanish regional variations exist in other Spanish-speaking countries in French language|French double vé and in Icelandic language|Icelandic tvöfalt vaff , all literally "double vee".
History
The sounds IPA|/w/ (spelled with ‹V›) and IPA|/b/ (spelled ‹B›) of Classical Latin developed into a Voiced bilabial fricative|bilabial fricative IPA|/ß/ between vowels in Vulgar Latin|Early Medieval Latin . Therefore, ‹V› no longer represented adequately the Voiced labial-velar approximant|labial-velar approximant sound IPA|/w/ of Common Germanic|Germanic phonology .
The Germanic IPA|/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 .cite web|url= http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/page/pronunciationofw |title=Why is 'w' pronounced 'double u' rather than 'double v'? : Oxford Dictionaries Online |publisher=Oxforddictionaries.com |date= |accessdate=2011-11-04 Gothic alphabet|Gothic , by contrast, simply used a letter based on the Greek Upsilon|? for the same sound.
It is from this ‹uu› Digraph (orthography)|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 rune|runic wynn (Unicode|‹?›). In early Middle English , following the 11th-century Norman Conquest of England|Norman Conquest , ‹uu› gained popularity and by 1300 it had taken wynn's place in common use.
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".Citation needed|date=December 2010The shift from the ligature ‹vv› to the distinct letter ‹w› is thus gradual, and is only apparent in abecedarium|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
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 "arm w ist so unmer und unbekannt, dasz man schier weder seinen namen noch sein gestalt waiszt, die Lateiner wöllen sein nit, wie sy dann auch sein nit bedürffen, so wissen die Teütschen sonderlich die sch?lmaister noch nitt was sy mit im machen oder wie sy in nennen sollen, an ettlichen enden nennet man in we, die aber ein wenig latein haben gesehen, die nennen in mit zwaien unterschidlichen lauten u auff ainander, also uu ... die Schwaben nennen in auwawau, wiewol ich disen kauderwelschen namen also versteh, das es drey u sein, auff grob schwäbisch au genennet." cited after Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch .
In Middle High German (and possibly already in late Old High German), the West Germanic phoneme IPA|/w/ became realized as IPA|v; this is why the German ‹w› today represents that sound. There is no phonological distinction between IPA|w and IPA|v in German and the IPA|w sound remains heard allophonically for ‹w›, especially in the cluster ‹schw›, besides IPA|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 va?s 'I know' (cf. English wit ). The Classical Latin ß is heard in the Southern German greeting Servus ('hello' or 'goodbye').
In Dutch language|Dutch it became a labiodental approximant IPA|/?/ (with the exception of words with -‹eeuw›, which have IPA|/e?ß/, or other diphthongs containing -‹uw› ). In many Dutch speaking areas, such as Flanders and Suriname , the IPA|/ß/ 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. English language|English , German language|German , Low German language|Low German , Dutch language|Dutch , Frisian languages|Frisian , Welsh language|Welsh , Cornish language|Cornish , Breton language|Breton , Walloon language|Walloon , Polish language|Polish , Kashubian language|Kashubian , Sorbian languages|Sorbian and Resian dialect|Resian use W in native words. English uses W to represent IPA|/w/, German, Polish and Kashubian use it for the voiced labiodental fricative IPA|/v/ (with Polish and related Kashubian using L for IPA|/w/), and Dutch uses it for IPA|/w/ or IPA|/?/. Unlike its use in other languages, the letter is used in Welsh language|Welsh and Cornish language|Cornish to represent the vowel IPA|/u/ as well as the related approximant consonant IPA|/w/. English also contains a number of words beginning with a W that is silent letter|silent in most dialects before a (pronounced) R, remaining from usage in Old English language|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 help:IPA|International Phonetic Alphabet , IPA|/w/ is used for the voiced labial-velar approximant , probably based on English.
In Finnish alphabet|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 alphabet|Danish , Norwegian alphabet|Norwegian and Swedish alphabet|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.cite book |last1=Aars |first1=Jonathan |last2=Hofgaard |first2=Simon Wright |title=Norske retskrivnings-regler med alfabetiske ordlister |publisher=W. C. Fabritius & Sønner |year=1907 |language=Norwegian |pages=19, 84 |url= http://urn.nb.no/URN:NBN:no-nb_digibok_2006081600014#& struct=DIVP19 |accessdate=September 18, 2011 |id=NBN 2006081600014 ‹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.cite web |url= http://www.spraknamnden.se/fragor/arkiv_sprakrad.htm#w |title=Veckans språkråd 2006 |language=Swedish |date=July 5, 2007 |accessdate=September 18, 2011 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 language|Walloon ), W is used mostly in foreign names and words recently borrowed ( le week-end , il watt , el kiwi ). When a spelling for IPA|/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 , ‹?› is pronounced like English /w/.
The Japanese language uses "W", pronounced /daburu/, as an ideogram meaning "double".cite web|url= http://no-sword.jp/blog/2006/06/let-pretending-to-be-injured-begin.html |title=Let the pretending to be injured begin|publisher=No-sword.jp |date=2006-06-10 |accessdate=2011-11-04
In Arabic language|Arabic , "W" is transliterated using the penultimate letter of the alphabet, Waw (letter)|? (waw) .
In Italian language|Italian , while the letter "W" isn't considered part of the standard Italian alphabet , the character is often used in place of Viva (hooray for...), while the same symbol written upside down indicates abbasso (down with...).
W is also the symbol for the chemical element tungsten , after its German name, Wolfram .
Name
"Double U" is the only English language|English 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.
SomeWho? |date=August 2011 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".cite web|last=Volkswagon|url= http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=qgEvy60bZYI|title=VW Unpimp - Drop it like its hot|accessdate=3 November 2011 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 commonSays who? |date=August 2011 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 .
anchor|Codes for computing
Computing codes
character
Unicode name
character encoding
Unicode
UTF-8
Numeric character reference
EBCDIC family
ASCII 1
1 and all encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
Other representations
Letter other reps|NATO=Whiskey |Morse=·–– |Character=W |Braille=?
See also
Voiced labio-velar approximant
Wh (digraph)
Notes
reflist|group="note"
References
Reflist|30em
External links
Commons|W
Wiktionary-inline|W
Wiktionary-inline|w
Latin alphabet|W| Category:ISO basic Latin letters Category:Latin alphabet ligatures
