Why is a ‘W’ made up of two ‘Vs’ pronounced as a ‘double U’?

The letter ‘W’ in the English alphabet looks like two ‘V’ letters juxtaposed. So why do the British call this letter ‘double U’, that is ‘double U’? To get the answer to this question, let’s take a look at the sweet short story of the letter ‘W’.

Almost everyone’s path has crossed at some point with English, the most spoken language in the world. Taught from primary school level in our country. English; some have had academic careers, others are a tool for the goal they want to achieve.

No matter what position English is in in your life, if you have studied the language, at some point you probably have the following question: Why does the letter ‘W’ appear as if there are two ‘V’s standing side by side? It’s pronounced as ‘double U’ or ‘double U’.?

To answer this question, we need to go back to the Middle Ages.

The letter ‘W’ was first used in the Middle Ages. Old English written language with letters of the Latin alphabet runes was used. One of the runes used in the alphabet was the Wynn rune.

‘What is a rune?’ If you ask; The runic writing system is based on Norse mythology, and the word itself means ‘magical symbol’ or ‘hidden knowledge’. Most symbols in the runic alphabet are universal and represent many attributes of the concept with which it is associated. For example, a rune related to fertility; characterizes soil, agriculture, food and similar elements related to this concept.

Wynn was used when two ‘U’ letters came together in words and described the sound. So, as you can see, the Wynn rune is briefly represented the ‘double U’ pronunciation. The base of the letter is based here.

So what happened to get the ‘W’ shape in the modern English alphabet?

webtwekno

The letter ‘W’, which is also featured in Webtekno, came into its present form with the birth of the modern printing press. in german The pronunciation of the letter ‘V’ changes depending on where it is in the word.. In order to be able to show these pronunciation differences in the written language, the printers in the form of ‘vv’ they started to print.

After the printing press developed in Germany, printing houses began to produce stock letter printing tools for letters in the alphabet. After a while, as the use of the two ‘V’ letters increased, printing houses started to use the specially produced sounds for this sound. they turned this combination into a letter. Thus, the letter ‘W’ as we know it today emerged.

Even this letter is actually Latin-based languages in many languages, including ‘double V’ well ‘double V’ shape being pronounced.

What happened that the British began to call this letter ‘double U’?

letter w

Patterns of letters printed in Germany began to be distributed all over the world, and England was one of the countries where these patterns were distributed. When the English got these patterns, they were not included in their alphabet until that day. They saw the letter ‘W’ for the first time.

Instead of adding a new letter to their alphabet, the British use the letter ‘W’ to represent the ‘uu’ sound in their alphabet. They thought of replacing it with the Wynn rune.. The Wynn rune was sometimes spelled ‘uu’ instead of the icon in the first subtitle image.

The English changed these two letters because the rune Wynn resembled the new letter ‘W’ when written as ‘uu’. This is also because it was pronounced ‘uu’ before. They named the letter ‘double U’.

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