W
W | |
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W w | |
Usage | |
Writing system | उ |
Other | |
Other letters commonly used with | w(x) |
Writing direction | Left-to-Right |
ISO basic Latin alphabet |
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AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz |
W, or w, is the twenty-third letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is double-u,[in 1] plural double-ues.[1][2]
Name
Double-u, whose name reflects stages in the letter's evolution when it was considered two of the same letter, a double U, is the only modern English letter whose name has more than one syllable.[in 2] It is also the only English letter whose name is not pronounced with any of the sounds that the letter typically makes in words, with the exception of H for some speakers.
Some speakers shorten the name "double u" into "dub-u" or just "dub"; for example,
In other Germanic languages, including German (but not Dutch, in which it is pronounced wé), its name is similar to that of English V. In many languages, its name literally means "double v": Portuguese duplo vê,[in 3] Spanish doble ve (though it can be spelled uve doble),[4][in 4] French double vé, Icelandic tvöfalt vaff, Czech dvojité vé, Estonian kaksisvee, Finnish kaksois-vee, etc.
History
Proto-Sinaitic | Phoenician Waw |
Western Greek Upsilon |
Latin V |
Latin W |
---|---|---|---|---|
The classical Latin alphabet, from which the modern European alphabets derived, did not have the "W" character. The "W" sounds were represented by the Latin letter "V" (at the time, not yet distinct from "U").
The sounds /
The
It is from this ⟨uu⟩
Scribal realisation of the digraph could look like a pair of Vs whose branches crossed in the middle: both forms (separate and crossed) appear, for instance, in the "running text" (in Latin) of the
Thus, the shift from the digraph ⟨VV⟩ to the distinct ligature ⟨W⟩ was gradual and was 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. However, it remained an outsider, not really considered part of the Latin alphabet proper, as expressed by Valentin Ickelshamer 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[9]
In Middle High German (and possibly already in late Old High German), the West Germanic phoneme /w/ became realized as [v]; this is why, today, the German ⟨w⟩ represents that sound.
Use in writing systems
Languages in italics are not usually written using the Latin alphabet | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Language | Dialect(s) | Pronunciation (IPA) | Environment | Notes |
Mandarin Chinese | Standard | /w/ | Pinyin romanization | |
Cornish | /ʊ/ | Usually | Archaic spelling | |
/w/ | Before vowels | |||
Dutch | Flemish, Surinamese | /β/ | ||
Standard | After u | |||
/ʋ/ | Usually | |||
English | /w/ | |||
German | Standard | /v/ | ||
Irish
|
/w/ | |||
Indonesian | /w/ | |||
Japanese | /w/ | In Rōmaji | ||
Kashubian | /v/ | |||
Kokborok | /ɔ/ | |||
Kurdish | /w/ | |||
Low German | /ʋ/ | |||
Lower Sorbian | /v/ | |||
North Frisian | /v/ | |||
Old Prussian | /w/ | Archaic spelling | ||
Polish | /v/ | |||
Saterlandic | /v/ | |||
Turkmen | /β/ | |||
Upper Sorbian | /β/ | |||
Walloon | /w/ | |||
Welsh | /ʊ/ | Usually | ||
/w/ | Before vowels | |||
West Frisian | /v/ | Before vowels | ||
/w/ | After vowels | |||
Wymysorys | /v/ | |||
Zhuang
|
/ɯ/ |
English
English uses ⟨w⟩ to represent /w/. There are also a number of words beginning with a written ⟨w⟩ that is
Other languages
In Europe languages with ⟨w⟩ in native words are in a central-western European zone between Cornwall and Poland: English,
The following languages historically used ⟨w⟩ for /v/ in native words, but later replaced it by ⟨v⟩:
In Swedish and Finnish, traces of this old usage may still be found in proper names. In Hungarian remains in some aristocratic surnames, e.g. Wesselényi.
Modern German dialects generally have only [v] or [ʋ] for West Germanic /w/, but [w] or [β̞] is still heard allophonically for ⟨w⟩, especially in the clusters ⟨schw⟩, ⟨zw⟩, and ⟨qu⟩. Some Bavarian dialects preserve a "light" initial [w], such as in wuoz (Standard German weiß [vaɪs] '[I] know'). The Classical Latin [β] is heard in the Southern German greeting Servus ('hello' or 'goodbye').
In
In
In
Multiple dialects of Swedish and Danish use the sound however. In Denmark notably in Jutland, where the northern half use it extensively in traditional dialect, and multiple places in Sweden. It is used in southern Swedish, for example in Halland where the words "wesp" (wisp) and "wann" (water) are traditionally used.[15] In northern and western Sweden there are also dialects with /w/. Elfdalian is a good example, which is one of many dialects where the Old Norse difference between v (/w/) and f (/v/ or /f/) is preserved. Thus "warg" from Old Norse "vargr", but "åvå" from Old Norse "hafa".
In the alphabets of most modern Romance languages, ⟨w⟩ is used mostly in foreign names and words recently borrowed (Italian il watt, Spanish el kiwi). In Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, [w] is a non-syllabic variant of /u/, spelled ⟨u⟩. In Italian, while the letter ⟨w⟩ is not considered part of the standard
In Indonesian, the letter "w" is called wé. The letter names in Indonesian are always the same with the sounds they produce, especially the consonants.
The Japanese language uses "W", pronounced daburu, as an ideogram meaning "double".[17] It is also used in internet slang to indicate laughter (like LOL), derived from the word warau (笑う, meaning "to laugh").
In Italian, while the letter ⟨w⟩ is not considered part of the standard
In the Kokborok language, ⟨w⟩ represents the open-mid back rounded vowel /ɔ/.
In Turkey the use of the w was banned between 1928 and 2013[18][19] which was a problem for the Kurdish population in Turkey as the w was a letter of the Kurdish alphabet.[20] The use of the letter w in the word Newroz, the Kurdish new year was forbidden[21] and names which included the letter were not able to be used.[18][22] In 2008, a court in Gaziantep reasoned the use of the letter w would incite civil unrest.[21] Nevertheless, the w was used in water closets throughout Turkey.[21]
In
"W" is the 24th letter in the
In Washo, lower-case ⟨w⟩ represents a typical /w/ sound, while upper-case ⟨W⟩ represents a voiceless w sound, like the difference between English weather and whether for those who maintain the distinction.
Other systems
In the
Other uses
- W is the symbol for the chemical element tungsten, after its German (and alternative English) name, Wolfram.[28]
- It is the SI symbol for the watt, the standard unit of power. It is also often used as a variable in mathematics, especially to represent a complex number or a vector.
- Former U.S. president George W. Bush was given the nickname "Dubya" after the colloquial pronunciation of his middle initial in Texas, where he spent much of his childhood.
- W stands for Work in physics
- W is the symbol for "watt" in the International System of Units (SI)
Related characters
Ancestors, descendants and siblings
- 𐤅: Semitic letter Waw, from which the following symbols originally derive
- U : Latin letter U
- V : Latin letter V
- Ⱳ ⱳ : W with hook
- Ꝡ ꝡ : Latin letter VY
- Ꟃ ꟃ : Anglicana W, used in medieval English and Cornish[29]
- IPA-specific symbols related to W: ʍ ɯ ɰ ʷ
- Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to W:[30] U+1D21 ᴡ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL W and U+1D42 ᵂ MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL W
- ʷ : Modifier letter small w is used in Indo-European studies[31]
- ꭩ : Modifier letter small turned w is used in linguistic transcriptions of Scots[32]
- W with ẘ
- װ (double Yiddish and Hebrewequivalent of W
- Arabic و, has the same origin despite bearing little resemblance to W
Ligatures and abbreviations
- ₩ : Won sign, capital letter W with double stroke
Other representations
Computing
Preview | W | w | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER W | LATIN SMALL LETTER W | ||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 87 | U+0057 | 119 | U+0077 |
UTF-8 | 87 | 57 | 119 | 77 |
Numeric character reference | W |
W |
w |
w |
EBCDIC family | 230 | E6 | 166 | A6 |
ASCII 1 | 87 | 57 | 119 | 77 |
- 1 Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
Other
NATO phonetic
|
Morse code |
Whiskey |
ⓘ |
Signal flag | Flag semaphore | American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling) | British manual alphabet (BSL fingerspelling )
|
Braille dots-2456 Unified English Braille |
See also
- Digamma (Ϝ), the archaic Greek letter for /w/
- Voiced labio-velar approximant
- Wh (digraph)
References
Informational notes
- ^ Pronounced /ˈdʌbəl.juː/ in formal situations, but colloquially often /ˈdʌbəjuː/, /ˈdʌbjuː/, /ˈdʌbəjə/ or /ˈdʌbjə/, with a silent l.
- ^ However, "Izzard" was formerly a two-syllable pronunciation of the letter Z.
- ^ In Brazilian Portuguese, it is dáblio, which is a loanword from the English double-u.
- Latin American Spanish, it is doble ve, similar regional variationsexist in other Spanish-speaking countries.
- roundhand calligraphy of Charles Snell and sometimes George Bickham. See also Florian Hardwig's gallery Archived May 18, 2020, at the Wayback Machineof images of its use in the German-speaking countries.
Citations
- Merriam Webster
- ^ 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, Ws, w's, or ws. - ^ Volkswagen. "VW Unpimp – Drop it like its hot". YouTube. Archived from the original on May 2, 2006. Retrieved November 3, 2011.
- ^ "Real Academia Española elimina la Ch y ll del alfabeto". Taringa!. November 5, 2010. Archived from the original on June 3, 2013. Retrieved November 4, 2011.
- ^ a b Shaw, Paul. "Flawed Typefaces". Print magazine. Archived from the original on June 23, 2015. Retrieved June 30, 2015.
- ^ a b Berry, John. "A History: English round hand and 'The Universal Penman'". Typekit. Adobe Systems. Archived from the original on October 3, 2020. Retrieved May 19, 2020.
- ^ Caslon, William IV (1816). Untitled fragment of a specimen book of printing types, c. 1816. London: William Caslon IV. Retrieved May 19, 2020.
- ^ "Why is 'w' pronounced 'double u' rather than 'double v'? : Oxford Dictionaries Online". Oxforddictionaries.com. Archived from the original on August 22, 2016. Retrieved November 4, 2011.
- ^ "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 schülmaister 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.
- ^ "Belarusian romanization (June 2019) (publishing.service.gov.uk)" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on October 6, 2021. Retrieved November 16, 2021.
- ^ "W, w - Gyldendal - Den Store Danske". Den Store Danske. Archived from the original on September 4, 2017. Retrieved November 7, 2017.
- ^ "Ordlista". Archived from the original on August 24, 2012. Retrieved January 29, 2015., page 1098
- ^ Aars, Jonathan; Hofgaard, Simon Wright (1907). Norske retskrivnings-regler med alfabetiske ordlister (in Norwegian). W. C. Fabritius & Sønner. pp. 19, 84. NBN 2006081600014. Archived from the original on February 18, 2022. Retrieved September 18, 2011.
- ^ "Veckans språkråd 2006" (in Swedish). July 5, 2007. Archived from the original on October 14, 2018. Retrieved September 18, 2011.
- ^ Peter, von Möller (1858). Ordbok öfver Halländska landskapsmålet. Lund: Berlingska boktryckeriet. p. 17.
- ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (1945). Vocabolario della lingua italiana (7 ed.). Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli. p. 1713.
- ^ "Let the pretending to be injured begin". No-sword.jp. June 10, 2006. Archived from the original on July 21, 2011. Retrieved November 4, 2011.
- ^ a b "Ban on Kurdish letters to be lifted with democracy package - Turkey News". Hürriyet Daily News. September 27, 2013. Archived from the original on January 17, 2022. Retrieved January 17, 2022.
- from the original on January 18, 2022. Retrieved January 17, 2022.
- from the original on December 19, 2021. Retrieved January 17, 2022.
- ^ a b c "Refugee Review Tribunal Australia" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on February 18, 2022. Retrieved January 17, 2022.
- from the original on January 18, 2022. Retrieved January 17, 2022.
- ^ Nhật My (May 19, 2009). "Ngôn ngữ thời @ của teen". VnExpress (in Vietnamese). FPT Group. Archived from the original on April 16, 2014. Retrieved April 15, 2014.
- ^ Trần Tư Bình (November 30, 2013). "Viết tắt chữ Việt trong ngôn ngữ @". Chim Việt Cành Nam (in Vietnamese) (53). Archived from the original on February 28, 2014. Retrieved April 15, 2014.
- ^ "Từ viết tắt: Trung ương". wcag.dongnai.gov.vn. Archived from the original on November 7, 2017. Retrieved July 4, 2017.
- ^ VIỆT NAM, ĐẢNG CỘNG SẢN. "Hệ thống văn bản". dangcongsan.vn (in Vietnamese). Archived from the original on July 3, 2017. Retrieved July 4, 2017.
- ^ "W, w, pronounced: wah". English, Leo James Tagalog-English Dictionary. 1990., page 1556.
- ISBN 9780470083949. Archivedfrom the original on February 18, 2022. Retrieved November 7, 2017 – via Google Books.
- ^ Everson, Michael (July 26, 2017). "L2/17-238: Proposal to add LATIN LETTER ANGLICANA W to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on January 31, 2020. Retrieved January 15, 2020.
- ^ Everson, Michael; et al. (March 20, 2002). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF). Unicode.org. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 19, 2018. Retrieved January 15, 2020.
- ^ Anderson, Deborah; Everson, Michael (June 7, 2004). "L2/04-191: Proposal to encode six Indo-Europeanist phonetic characters in the UCS" (PDF). Unicode.org. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 11, 2017. Retrieved January 15, 2020.
- ^ Everson, Michael (May 5, 2019). "L2/19-075R: Proposal to add six phonetic characters for Scots to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on June 13, 2019. Retrieved March 17, 2020.