this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
649 points (97.5% liked)

memes

15002 readers
3633 users here now

Community rules

1. Be civilNo trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politicsThis is non-politics community. For political memes please go to [email protected]

3. No recent repostsCheck for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No botsNo bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/AdsNo advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.

A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment

Sister communities

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Why do people say double "U" when they mean a double "V"?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

There was no distinction between V and U when W first started being used. They were considered the same letter, with V just being the style for writing it at the start of words (like that long S that looks like an f). So you would write "have" as haue and "upon" as vpon.

When it was representing a consonant in classical Latin, it sounded like a modern English W. So the famous veni vidi vici - I came, I saw, I conquered - was pronounced more like wenee weedee weekee.

Eventually the V sound started to emerge in some places where Latin and its descendants had used that W sound before, and people started treating the two forms as different letters. By this point the W was already in widespread use, though, so whatever people already called it had a good chance of sticking

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

The implications for Latin had escaped me until you pointed them out.

That's amazing, and I demand the public be aware of wenee weedee weekee.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago

In Finnish and probably bunch of other languages it's "double v"

[–] ulterno 3 points 3 days ago

I speak cursive.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

In French (and no doubt countless other languages) it is 'double v'. So to answer your question: The English language is flawed and for most people, it's too jarring to correct it

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

W is not double anything in German.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 15 hours ago

French, not German