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'W' Considered Harmful

runningwithdata.com

31–40 of 51 posts

Re: 'W' Considered Harmful

#32
post #3

thats why i just say dub dub dub for www. There couldnt be a worse standard subdomain. Also great article.. if you are interested in measuring words and speech, we should talk ;)

Actually, I hold the opposite opinion, and there are a few reasons why I think "www" is probably the best choice. 1. Communicating it by phone or radio is unmistakable. Have you ever had to spell things out for people over the phone? It's awful, even when using the NATO phonetic alphabet. Abandon all hope if you have to relay case sensitive camel-case directory paths, class names or passwords. This is why I always en…

You may want to join this movement: http://www.www.extra-www.org

Re: 'W' Considered Harmful

#35
post #19

"wubba wubba wubba dot google dot com" Also, the Latin alphabet is used by many languages, in which other letters have more than one syllable: off the top of my head, Spanish has many (not to mention things they count as letters that we don't), and French has i grec for y .

F, H, J, L, M, N, Ñ, R, S, V, W, X, Y, Z (and Y is also i griega here). Those are the letters whose name has more than one syllable: more than half of them. In particular, W has four syllables (U-ve do-ble). So please stop whining, English speakers all over the world :).

On a side note, the article's comments mention something very important: the "www" didn't originate in an English-speaking country, so it's not that is "harmful" because someone didn't think it properly; instead, it's "harmful" in English because it just wasn't thought with that language in mind.

Re: 'W' Considered Harmful

#37
post #24
post #7

Just give it a more efficient name. In German it's referred to as [veː].

We do this in Sweden too. WWW is pronounced VVV and the car manufacturer is pronounced BMV.

And that other German car manufacturer, in Danish pronounced VV.

Re: 'W' Considered Harmful

#38
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, of course, w's name does contain one of the vowel sounds that w forms (the long u), just like y's does (the long i). Neither of those letters name contains their own consonant sound.

Wait, when does 'w' make the sound [u] (as opposed to [w] or [ʊ])?

If you allow it to be assisted by another letter (as we must in the case of Q), "few" rhymes with "you".
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