“The letter W is a child of the fall of Rome. In the fifth century CE, the western half of the Roman Empire disintegrated into a patchwork of new kingdoms and new rulers. The reasons behind this co…

202 points•NaOH•10 days ago•109 comments•

109 comments

Sharlin10 days ago
The history of W in Finnish is interesting (for some values of "interesting"). Mikael Agricola [1], a Lutheran clergyman, essentially created literary Finnish from scratch in the 1500s (before that, Finnish had existed solely as a spoken, vernacular language, with official business conducted in Swedish (or German), and until the reformation, the language of the Church had of course been Latin).

Agricola had to create an alphabet for Finnish, and naturally borrowed heavily from Swedish and, to a lesser extent, German. His orthography was not particularly self-consistent, and for example the /u/ and /v/ phonemes might be written as either "u", "v", or "w" in Agricola's works. For example, the word uusi (/u:si/; "new") was written by him as "wsi", indeed using "w" as a literal "double-u". The /w/ sound did not exist in spoken Finnish.

Over time, Finnish became the almost entirely phonetic language that it is now, with letters matching phonemes essentially one-to-one. /u/ was regularized as "u" and /v/ as "v". As /w/ still doesn't exist, the letter "w" is very rarely used, mainly in some surnames as an alternative spelling of "v"; phonebooks used to collate "v" and "w" as the same letter. In loanwords "w" becomes "v" (e.g. "whiskey" -> viski). Finns with a thick accent (see "Rally English" [2]) tend to pronounce the foreign /w/ as /v/ when speaking English, similar to Germans.

Today, imitation of Agricola's orthography is the Finnish version of "ye olde English", used for humorous or intensifying effect. For example, the word vanha "old" might be spelled "wanha" in the name of an antiques shop. "Wanha" also used to be a standard "old news" reply on IRC, especially to links that had already been pasted by someone (and this became so annoying on some channels that it became a kick-worthy offense).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikael_Agricola

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rally_English

jltsiren10 days ago
Finnish W is inherently tied to Swedish W. Historically, V and W were the same letter, and they could be used interchangeably. W was generally preferred in Fraktur and V in Antiqua. In the 19th century, the orthography changed to use V everywhere, except in some proper names. This happened a bit earlier in Swedish than in Finnish. And, recently, V and W became separate letters. In 2006 in Swedish and (arguably) in 2022 in Finnish.
OskarS10 days ago
I remember vividly being so annoyed when they added W to the Swedish alphabet in 2006. The alphabet I learned to recite in first grade is suddenly wrong?! I still don't say it correctly unless I concentrate, if I have to recite the alphabet, I always skip over W.

The argument at the time was that no "native" Swedish words are spelled with a W, so it shouldn't be part of our alphabet. However, but 2006, enough loan-words had been imported to Swedish with W's (like "webben", "the web") and it was in enough brand names (like "Volkswagen") that it should be included.

But I'm still mad about it! This is my tiny ridiculous hill to die on, W should not be part of the Swedish alphabet!

Sharlin10 days ago
Yes, thanks for the addition! I though about mentioning the link to Swedish W but wasn’t fully sure about the details.
gerdesj10 days ago
Ye is really Þe (Þ = thorn) and it seems that printers, back in the day, used y instead, probably to save money. So it was probably considered old school when printing became popular and wasn't worth getting excited about.

Agricola means farmer in Latin, is that an incidental? You mention Lutherian, so perhaps an affectation.

pge10 days ago
The early printing presses in Britain were imported from the continent where the letter thorn was not used, so they didn’t have a thorn letter. The printers used either y or “th” (which was also already being used by scribes in place of thorn in parts of the country anyway) to replace thorn depending on how much space they had. Y followed by a superscript e was common way to print “the” when space was very limited.
jltsiren10 days ago
His father was a farmer. Commoners usually didn't have family names at the time (except in Eastern Finland), but he needed one when he went to school.
Sharlin10 days ago
Yes, I know what ye is :) Similarly, the "olde Finnish" is usually not exactly historically accurate.

Agricola was born Mikael Olofsson/Olavinpoika, i.e. a simple patronymic surname. He assumed the Latin name when he started studies in a Latin school [1] in Viborg/Viipuri (now Vyborg, Russia). He became interested in the Reformation and Renaissance humanism; later, as an ordained priest, he was sent to Wittenberg and studied directly under Luther himself. He was instrumental in executing the Reformation on the Finnish side of Sweden (then just a Swedish province; Finland as a political or geographical entity didn't really exist yet). Among other deeds, he translated the New Testament to Finnish from Luther's German translation (and besides the whole orthography, had to invent lots of new words in the process).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_school

Tangurena210 days ago
When handwritten, thorn looks like a sloppy y.
cynicalkane10 days ago
Maybe it's just me, but I've never met a German in real life who turned 'w's into 'v's. German has about a zillion vowel sounds and a sound like a 'w' shows up in words like 'Bauer'.
ses198410 days ago
It’s not about the sound being in the language. It most often happens with loan words that are spelled with a w but make a v sound.
ErroneousBosh10 days ago
"V" for "W" and "F" for "V" in German isn't really accurate, it's just "here's how to get closer to it with the English fricatives you already know".
vhantz10 days ago
English is at best my 3rd language. I have always found the huge discrepancy between pronunciation and spelling really nonsensical (keep in mind that I even speak French). But this article really helps see all that in a new light. Nothing is a-historical, not even phonetics. Newfound respect for the English language.
gerdesj10 days ago
English isn't the only language that uses the Roman alphabet (which I'm pretty sure is named after the first two Hebrew letters and not old Greek).

English is not Hungarian, where each sound has a glyph with a diacritic to adjust to taste (sorry: sound). Well, it sort of does and I recall a Hungarian telling me that. However, I recall noting street names in Budapest and asking about one or two and it turns out that spelling with adjustments (glyh plus diacritcs) breaks down a bit. I'm not enough of an expert but I suspect Hungarian is quite as mad as any other language, at the periphery.

Its also rather moot as to when "English" actually arose. I think we can allow roots, in all sorts of, not places ... but times! As this article mentions, we have lost the letters wynn and thorne from English.

When you see the words "Ye olde shoppe" (often in the Gothic black letter typeface) note that the Y is actually the letter thorne and ye is pronounced the or thee. It is unlikely that anyone will actually notice!

yread10 days ago
Hungarian doesn't have that many letters with diacritic (only 9: á, é, í, ó, ú, ö , ü, ő and ű), they use digraphs (cs, sz,. ..) for some sounds. Maybe they meant Czech (15: á, é, í, ó, ú, ů, ý, č, š, ž, ř, ď, ť, ň, ě)? or Slovak (18: á, é, í, ó, ú, ý, ŕ, ĺ, č, š, ž, dž, ď, ť, ň, ľ, ô, ä)
ErroneousBosh10 days ago
Gaelic only has 18 letters (and W isn't one of them) but the vowels have diacritics - grave accents - that mark them as being longer.

This makes some things a bit of a nightmare because words can have different meanings based on those sounds, and that can drastically alter things. "Fèis" - "faaysh" - means "festival", "feis" with a short vowel is not a word you'd use in polite company.

crossroadsguy10 days ago
> discrepancy between pronunciation and spelling

That’s rich coming from a speaker of French

But on a serious note, this discrepancy at this point is entirely unnecessary and wasteful.

wongarsu10 days ago
As a German, I always found French to be incredibly regular. At least in the sense that from spelling you can easily infer pronunciation. The other way around is trickier. At least compared to German, which tries to strike a balance between the two directions. Compared to English, French is still pretty reasonable on that front too

There is a large number of digraphs and trigraphs (do we really need three letters to spell an "o" sound?), but unlike English digraphs they are actually regular: eau is always pronounced the same, while English has at least four different ways of pronouncing gh. French not pronouncing some word endings in most situations is also a bit weird, but that also has pretty regular rules

adrian_b10 days ago
While in French there is also a great discrepancy between the written language and the spoken language, when reading French the corresponding pronunciation is almost always very easy to predict. Only the reverse can be difficult, because many ambiguous pronunciations are differentiated in writing.

There exists no other language besides English where the pronunciation rules are so irregular, with so many special cases and exceptions.

krige10 days ago
Yeah but reforming a language is nigh impossible without a very expensive and long term effort from the government, and good luck selling that to those in power.

Plus, how do you decide what's changed and what's retained? To quote one Mr. Clemens,

In Year 1 that useless letter “c” would be dropped to be replased either by “k” or “s”, and likewise “x” would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which “c” would be retained would be the “ch” formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform “w” spelling, so that “which” and “one” would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish “y” replasing it with “i” and iear 4 might fiks the “g/j” anomali wonse and for all.

Generally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeiniing voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez “c”, “y” and “x”—bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez —tu riplais “ch”, “sh”, and “th” rispektivili.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Verdex10 days ago
English is my first language. I have always found this discrepancy deeply unsettling. A personal problem on my part I'm sure.

I think the issue is that there are rules but they're really complicated. So nobody learns them. And then they teach kids by cultural taboo violation.

"The letter 'c' makes two sounds. An 's' sound and a 'k' sound."

Atlantic osean.

"Wrong! It's Atlantic oshean! Why are you wrong!"

Then iterate for 20 years.

YouTube videos talking about linguistics and history have been a significant eye opener about the source for half a lifetime of frustration.

nl10 days ago
If you aren't already familiar with it, the great vowel shift in English is also very informative about the discrepancy between pronunciation and spelling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift

The TL;DR is that vowel pronunciation was changing in English between 1400 and 1700, and English spelling was becoming standardised between during 15th and 16th centuries. Depending on if the spelling of a particular word was standardised before or after the vowel shift means the spelling might or might not reflect the pronunciation.

wkjagt10 days ago
I live in a French speaking part of Canada but am originally from the Netherlands. My name starts with a W (Willem). In Dutch W sounds a lot like a V, just a bit less fricative. When someone asks me how my name is pronounced, and hears me say it, they go "ooohh, so it's pronounced with a V". Sometimes I demonstrate the difference by pronouncing my name with a V and then with a W, but most of the time people don't hear much of a difference, and to them it just sounds like I am pronouncing it with a slightly different V both times. More often though, people have seen my name in its written form before we meet, and since this is a French speaking part of the world, I automatically become Ouilemme.
pluc10 days ago
I have Weimaraners - they have the same problem and it sounds ridiculous with a French W. Braque de Ouais-mar instead of Veimaraner, can't stand it so I call them by their German names.

Sorry about your name though, I'll do my part in our area

ithkuil10 days ago
I'm surprised this article doesn't mention that classical latin pronunciation actually had V realized as W or U depending on context.

Latin didn't have two letters to distinguish V and U. You can still find inscriptions with VVA (modern spelling UVA)

Later that sound morphed to a voiced labiodental fricative which is what we think of V now

zarzavat10 days ago
Would be remiss to not mention W's biopic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg2j7mZ9-2Y
olexsmir10 days ago
just come here to link this video...

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