Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

TL;DR: I personally thing both 'UU' and 'VV' are equally correct, given the history of the Latin alphabet's evolution.

Given the subject matter, I'd disagree slightly, but we're getting into obscure territory: 'U' and 'V' were glyphs of the same letter, but the two glyphs ended up being used to represent the vowel and consonant respectively as new letters. 'V' was traditionally the glyph used in writing and carving owing to it being the easier glyph to carve with a chisel. In Roman Rustic caps (as seen in Virgil's writings), the 'V'/'U' was halfway in-between a 'V' and a 'U' in shape.

When I say I disagree, I'm not saying you're wrong, BTW, so much that differentiating between 'U' and 'V' up until the late Middle Ages is difficult, complicated by the fact that the shift from 'UU'/'VV' to 'W' happened over a very long period of time, overlapping, IIRC, with 'U' and 'V' becoming separate letters.



To add some history to your opinion: In English we call it "double-u", whereas in French it is "double-v". It seems even at the time of invention there was a difference of opinion as to which letter w was doubling.


I would argue that w is a ligature of double-v but since the latin v was pronounced like todays u, its pronounced double-u.

Works very well in english and other European languages.

Uuindouu... One cant help but make a w sound.

Vvindovv... Not so much.


Also in Spanish and Italian. And given that these three are all neo-latin languages, unlike English, I strongly suspect that the real origin of w is from VV, not UU.


> neo-latin

You mean 'Romance': Neo-Latin refers to the revived Latin from the Renaissance era, which is now used as a source of international scientific vocabulary.

> I strongly suspect that the real origin of w is from VV, not UU.

This is why I wrote what I wrote: the timeline for that doesn't match up. The 'W' ligature came along when 'V' and 'U' were glyphs of the same letter, not separate letters themselves. In fact, 'V'/'U' was generally pronounced when spelling it out the way you would've said 'U' at the time, with the name 'V' got coming later.

In essence: it's equally right to say 'W' came from 'VV' as it is to say it came from 'UU', as they were the same thing up until surprisingly recently, to the extent that 'U' and 'V' weren't differentiated in French until the mid-1700s.


There's also the interesting question of language differences. While a single letter might have been good enough for Latin, Italian, French, etc. German has a stronger need for three, as shifting pronunciation of "v" as a consonant to become practically the same as "f" strangely wastes a letter and requires a new letter (which turned out to be "w") for the old sound. Meanwhile, German also has "u" and "ü" as vowels.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: