The W

[xanthacroid]

THE LETTER W
Maybe this isn't a puzzle. But is it really possble for a letter to have syllables, that would imply that it had vowels. But it can't because its only a single letter. No other letter does this, but our friend the "W". So can somebody explain how this is possible?

[daniel801]

one syllable letters would have a vowel as well

[tigg]

and shouldn't we be pronouncing it "double vee" instead of "double yoo"?

[ctrlaltdel]

we call it that actually in slovak, same goes for german...

letter W if turned at 90 degrees at a time is the following:

E

M

3

W

doesnt look so convincing in typing but using handwriting it could be more clear

[ralphmerridew]

Ellery Queen once wrote a story ("E=Murder") which was based on the fact that the letter can be read four ways.

[The Cheshire Man]

I'd like to get a copy of that story...what's it called?

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[ralphmerridew]

It's called "E=Murder", and was reprinted in _Queens Full_.

[Chuck]

It should be called "Double V", not "Double U". I mean, just look at it.

[Jen Aside]

Don't you remember your childhood, Chuck? The Roman U was written like a V, and they didn't have "V" in their alphabet.

Although other languages (French, I think?) do basically pronounce it "double-V"...

[groza528]

Oui, en français c'est 'doobla-vay' et V est 'vay'

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If you think the little things don't matter, try falling asleep with a mosquito in your room.

[extropalopakettle]

It always annoyed me that it takes nine syllables to say WWW, but only three to say "world wide web".

[HappyMutant]

... which is why I've taken to saying "Dub dot ... dot com."

[Lepton]

Happy = Genius!

[impossibleroot]

Or just say, "greylabyrinth.com" -- most browsers can handle it, I believe.

[Tahnan]

Grrrr. The old tech support worker in me is coming out: "greylabyrinth.com" and "www.greylabyrinth.com" are not the same thing. Your browser may treat "www.greylabyrinth.com" and the correct "http://www.greylabyrinth.com/" as the same thing, but the difference between the site with and the site without the "www" at the beginning is significant and is not something that your "browser" handles.

Yes, many websites will set up both to work, but that's something that happens on their end, not yours.

[Luna]

Ah, interesting - I'd noticed that 1742.net doesn't work without its www at the beginning, although almost all the other sites I go to do... I was wondering why that was. Makes more sense now.

[impossibleroot]

Easy, Tahnan! No offense intended! I'm a web dev and know what's going on with it, I'm just a little more casual about it, I guess, but you're absolutely right.

[ronl]

Its a little known fact that the letter H has two vowels. Look it up if you don't believe me.

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[This message has been edited by ronl (edited 02-11-2002 04:24 PM).]

[Rollercoaster]

Ronl, I happened to catch that in last year's national spelling bee. The poor girl guessed 'ECH', which isn't really close, but I've always wondered what would have happened if she would have just said 'H' and stuck to her guns. It's in the dictionary that way, it has the correct meaning that way, the spelling is legitimate, and there was nothing in the moderator's comments that really indicated she needed to come up with anything more.

(It's spelled AITCH for those interested)

[impossibleroot]

Where are those phonetically-spelled letters listed on the web? Is there an 'official' resource?

[groza528]

wouldn't ECH be pronounced 'ek?' or in a more German way 'ekh?' (difficult to write, the kh represents the CH sound at the end of 'J.S. Bach')

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If you think the little things don't matter, try falling asleep with a mosquito in your room.

[Rollercoaster]

I suppose the only official source would be the dictionary. As far as I can tell, not every letter has an 'expanded' spelling, although I admit my dictionary is certainly not the largest in the world.

[ZutAlors!]

http://www.dictionary.com/ lists the following as acceptable spellings for consonants:
B: bee
C: cee
D: dee
F: ef
G: gee
H: aitch
J: jay
K: kay
L: el
M: em
N: en
P: pee
Q: cue
R: ar
S: ess
T: tee
V: vee
W: double-u
X: ex
Y: wye
Z: zee or zed

I did this by guesswork, so there may be acceptable alternatives that I don't know about. I couldn't find any of the vowels, so I suspect that alternate vowel spellings are not kosher?

[hijack]Hey Rollercoaster! Long time no see! (Rollercoaster introduced me to the GL, way back when we used to work at the same place)[/hijack]

[planet_buzz]

Ok, honest show of hands... who looked at the above list and thought, "Hmmm... that would make for an interesting puzzle... maybe a paragraph that contained all of those."??

I did.