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Ask Lemmy @lemmy.world

Allah @lemmy.world

2mo ago

westerners, how do you pronounce the letter "w" do you say dablu or double you or just dub or double v?

96 comments

I am fancy, so I say double ewe.
- 🐑🐑
  
  "I love sheep" ~ Richie Cunningham
- Double yew.
  
  Reilly: Dary, do you know how many dudes are jerking off to your girlfriend right now? Yew! Jonesy: Wait, I actually know the answer. Yew. Sixteen point one thousand. Yew!
- ew

Double you

Canadians here.
It's "double-you", but if spoken quickly, it can become "dub-you"
- Non native speaker, and both of those hold true for me as well. Unless I'm referencing a hostname with www in it; then I just say dub-dub-dub
  
  I still stick the yous in there, haha

“Double U”.
- Or if I'm saying it fast, as in "www.google.com", it's "dub-you"

Dubya
- George Dubya

What is a "westerner"?
- Apparently people who speak English
  The French, Polish, Dutch, etc. are now reclassified as Asians
- I love to poke at people's conception of Western with these questions:
  Is New Zealand Western?
  Is Japan Western?
  Is Brazil Western?
  Is South Africa Western?
  Is Kenya Western?
  Is Lebanon Western?
  Is Israel Western?
  Is Hungary Western?
  Is Finland Western?
  Is Russia Western?
  Is Armenia Western?
  
  If your nation was within NATO, it's likely western If after the collapse of the USSR, your nation joined EU, it's likely western And anything outside this category would be third world or eastern (Russia, China, Vietnam)

Normal conversational speed: dubya
Enunciating: double you
Need to be unambiguous: whiskey
- More like duba-you instead of dubya in normal conversation.
- Tell me you are from the south without telling me you are from the south

Doubleyou

When talking about the letter of the alphabet, I say "double u"
When that letter occurs in a word, it's pronounced with pursed lips and full throated vowel sound like in "water"

"Dubble-you"
Not saying where I'm from.
- Isn't that a maple leaf though?

in english: double you in german: ve (german e, idk how to tell it to someone only knowing english)
- German: sounds like “vay”
  
  That's something I've never understood about German or Russian. Both languages have letters that make the English w sound yet they have trouble with it? It's not like the "th" sound which doesn't exist in German so it makes no sense to me.
  If you can pronounce the sound why can't you pronounce it for w's??

Way to complicated, just say "we" with the w from way and the e from hell like we Germans do.
- Another great example of our German efficiency! Warum zur Hölle soll das ein Doppel-V sein? Habt's ihr alle Lack gesoffen?
  
  Aber "fau" macht Sinn ja?
- "ve"

Double V (pronounced double vé, so it’s double you in English).
www is "double vé double vé double vé" in France, but often said "vévévé" in Switzerland. I believe that’s coming from the German speaking part of the country and adapted to French language.
- Funny, opposite shortening in English - "double you double you double you" often becomes "dubdubdub"
- Same in Denmark. I think it’s only English that’s weirdly pronouncing it as “double you”, even though the letter “W” is clearly two V’s 😁
  
  When handwritten in English it's typically the curvier U shape.

In Swedish the letter w is called "dubbel v", apart from when spelling URLs, then we just say something like "ve, ve, ve, punkt, de, änn, punkt, äss, e" if we wanted to say the URL "www.dn.se".
- The "äss" phonetic spelling will really help the english speakers reading it not pronounce it as "ass". Love it.
  
  Hehe, I didn't even consider that (:
- I'd probably have transcribed the letter pronunciation as 've, ve, ve, punkt, de, en, punkt, ess e'.
  Just goes to show you that 'en' doesn't even follow the normal pronunciation rules of Swedish, unless we're talking about the tree, in which case it does.
  
  I thought about that but "en" is pronounced differently from "änn", and we have the word "äss" from a deck of cards.
- I also refuse this bizarre English / German / Polish idea that W is a separate letter and not just a fun way to write V.

I'm a silly lil guy so I pronounce it "Wubble Wu" for fun.

Double you

Kansan here. It's pronounced "double-you," but my mouth tends to skip past the L so it sounds more like "dub-you" or "dub-yə"

I'm American, fwiw. Formally I say "double you," informally I say "dub."
- 🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅

Double you.

How someone is pronouncing W is actually a good way to guess where the speaker is from, or where the person that taurht them learned english.
double you for british/american accents
dubba you for some american accents
Dablu or dabloo is a clear indication that the speaker is not a naitive western english speaker, usually indicating indian for the speaker.
double v (often pronounced as double we) usually points towards somewhere near germany/holland/belgium
I've never heard anyone say just dub, curious if anyone has?
Edit: I lied. W pronounced 'dub' is only ever used to indicate a 'win'. e.g. 'Took the dub'
- Just dub-dub-dub for a url
- Or in school names, like U Dub for University of Washington.
- double v (often pronounced as double we) usually points towards somewhere near germany/holland/belgium
  As a Dutchie, we pronounce W as "Weigh" or "Way". No double nonsense.
- People call Buffalo Wild Wings B-Dubs

In Irish it's called wae.

It probably depends on the accent, but we say "Double U".

In Dutch we pronounce it like "way". It's much shorter than double U.
- But we make up for that with griekse y, korte ei and lange ij! All pronounced [ɛi], similar to 'eye'.
  
  That's true! I'm honestly not sure why we need to have both ei and ij. Must be difficult for people learning the language.

In portuguese, we say "dáblio" (dah-bli-u)

"Dibby dubs"

I pronounce ‘M’ but upside down.
Because we say ‘double ewe’ and ‘dooblay vee’ and I find it unconscionable that we Canadians are forced to speak based on what font we are speaking in.

I've always wondered why it's not double v, but I say double you
- I looked into it once before, the short answer is because the letter predates the distinction between "u" and "v".
  Edit: Here's a comment I made a while ago on the same topic with a little more information: https://lemmy.world/comment/10659648
- I think it's because of how the letter is written in cursive that we call it 'double u'.
- In French, it is!

There's also "dubyuh" that's fairly common. Hell, we had a president that pronounced it that way.

dubbuhlyou

I speak spanish so for me is “doble u”

I heard a guy call it a "we" and I liked that. Such as:
"ay-we-ee" (A-W-E)

In Portuguese: "dáblio" (which sounds almost exactly like a fastly-spoken "double you"), except that the "dou" is more like an "daah" (the "da" sound from "Ada" or "Adamant").
In English, I try to exactly pronounce it as "double you".

Germans, being efficient, just call it "veh"

Dubba you

In my Carolina drawl it comes out as "dubbayew."

Double-you, dubya, or just dubs.

Duh be you

I'm blue

"double you" formally or "doubleya" informally.
- "Dubba-you" is my informal; "dubbya" if I'm throwing an exaggerated southern accent

Way

W, pronounced as in a couple of lesbian sheep.

dabulu

Sometimes I'll say "dub you" informally.

I very strongly prefer dub, but no one I say it to gets it unless I explain it to them.

dvojni v

Vee

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