Comments on: Why is W Called ‘Double U’?

By: Mariel van Hees

Mariel van Hees — Tue, 08 May 2012 03:32:17 +0000

In French it’s called a Double V. In Dutch it’s neither U or V but pronounced “Wey”. I think that’s because the Dutch language already has many double letters in words to produce short vs long vowel sounds that saying Double Double U or V is just plain silly.

By: Virginia Anderson

Virginia Anderson — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:10:37 +0000

Another interesting evolution of “W” is that this does not even exist in a traditional Spanish alphabet. Modern Spanish does use the letter — but essentially only for borrowed foreign words and names. This means I have old-style dictionaries with separate chapters for the letters “CH”, “LL”, “Ñ”, and “RR” – but no chapter for “W”

By: Mashkioya

Mashkioya — Sun, 03 May 2009 04:33:52 +0000

I’ve also seen old type-set documents where they just used two Vs. And it is also quite interesting to read old literature such as Spenser’s Faerie Queene in which V and U are treated as the same letter (as in Latin), V appearing initially and when capitalised, and U being used within words. The same goes for I and J as well. Such spelling can be confusing at first, but one soon gets used to it.

By: James Wang

James Wang — Sat, 02 May 2009 08:04:40 +0000

good article
wonder there are no other comments