English is an interesting and incestuous mangling of stuff. I sometimes think about W
and it is a pretty interesting letter with much mystery and intrigue.
In French, oui begins with a
W
sound, yet the word contains no consonant. So firstly: how canW
be a consonant? Its formation in the mouth is more like that of a vowel.From Latin roots, there are words with double-
U
s:vacuum
andcontinuum
, etc. Yet, these are distinct from theW
:vacwm
andcontinwm
are definitely not a thing. To this point, doubling other vowels (e.g.a --> aa
does not generally speaking make them into consonants.)In German, the
W
is more like ourV
, and is indeed has a consonant sound to it.
So,
- When and how did
UU
become aW
? - Why are
U
,UU
,V
,W
such a collective and cross-bred mess in English? - Why do we not use
W
as a literal double-U
? - From a typographic standpoint, why has the
W
been rendered as twov
s and not twou
s?