this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2024
1050 points (98.0% liked)

memes

10406 readers
2085 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.

Sister communities

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I don't get why w is called double u when it's clearly a double v

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

It's a long story. In short: In Latin script u and v were the same letter "u" but had two pronunciations depending on whether it was being used as a vowel or consonant. But when adapting the alphabet to Germanic languages (including Old English) the same two sounds were from two different letters, so they put two "u"s together to make double u: vv.

The full story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg2j7mZ9-2Y

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

In some languages (Spanish, for example) it's double v.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

U and V used to be the same letter