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!

  • Dasus@lemmy.world
    12·
    20 hours ago

    I’m only curious because something that draws me to the language is its “common sense” approach to pronunciation.

    Ever looked at Finnish? I know a lot of people say of a lot of their own languages that “we say things like they’re written”, but we really do. There’s like one phone (linguistics term, not telephone) in the language. It’s the velar nasal that is in the word “language”, ironically. Other than that, purely phonetic. You can put any word in front of me and I’ll pronounce it the same way any other Finn would, where as in English, asking “how do you pronounce that” is common as hell.

    Anyway, look at some of these examples:

    A horse = hevonen [ˈheʋonen]

    Peasoup = hernekeitto [ˈherneˌkːei̯tːo]

    Come = tule! [ˈtuˌle]

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Finnish

      • Dasus@lemmy.world
        2·
        3 hours ago

        Accents are really to do with pronunciation more than the words. Like a person speaking the King’s English with a heavy Russian accent is still using the same grammar and words.

        Finnish has dialects.

        Same thing with Nordics in general, even though Scandinavian languages aren’t related to us in the slightest. (They’re more like cousins of English.) The reason I mention it is that all Nordics pretty much use a concept called “book-languages”. It’s the standardised spelling and grammar. Dialects can vary quite a bit, to the extent that I might have more trouble understanding someone slightly drunk with a heavy dialect from the other side of Finland than I would understanding a light Scottish accent.

        There’s also Finnic languages in general. Karelian is one. It’s to Finnish what the Scots language is to English.

        But everyone understands the “book language”, although no-one really speaks it. Newsanchors, politicians, etc, arguably, but even they use a bit of informal expression from dialects sometimes.

        But you don’t see news readers with heavy accents, unless it’s for comedy. My city used to have a news cast with a reader who had the strongest Turku dialect.

        The differences are mostly tribal (Finland had “tribes” before the national movement), if you look back far enough. But yeah, geographic, really.