to only realise now that a W (a double U) is actually a UU. Say 'W' out loud

[Snooks1971]

Shoot me now.
How the hell have I never noticed that a double u is W when said out aloud?

Another one not understanding what it is posters didn't get - that double u and W are the same letter?

This is strangely thrilling at 2.30am....god I need to get a life as well as some sleep don't I?!

Pimmsy luckily for me in French speaking bits of Switzerland, where we lived, they did huitante et nonante etc for 80/90. Saved all the counting on my fingers!

So... anyone else own a vacwm cleaner

I think posters are saying:

1. in written word, they know the letter W (and its usage)
2. if asked to verbally name that letter, they say 'double u' (accent/linguistic shortcuts aside)
3. they have just had a flash realisation that what they are saying when they verbalise the name of the letter W is literally 'double u', having previously conceptualised 'double u' as an entity in itself without analysing constituent parts.

I once taught a Spanish Friend the name for the dummy in a field used to protect crops from hungry birds - scarecrow. Spanish Friend immediately responded by breaking it down into two parts - 'ah, because it scares crows away'. English Friend with us, an utterly brilliant girl whose intelligence and articulacy cannot be in doubt, was open mouthed, and said this was the first time she'd ever thought of that word in two parts, she'd never made the connection with what the word was and the function of the item the word indicates. For her, 'scarecrow' was a unique word.

LOL - hubby had the same realisation for carpark- didn't connect parking the car !

Errm, whut? What name w-l?

If you say Y (not yuh) but Y you say it as W-eye (W-I)

Y can be used as an eye sound -

Sky SK-eye
Bye B-eye
Why w-eye

The Y has an i sound

They get pretty confused after 16 I'd say. All that ten seven, ten eight. It's just not normal.

You do realise we do that in English from 13 to 19 right?

Some posters on here discovered that 1st meant firST, 2nd ..secoND etc

Well fuck me sideways, so it does

The teen numbers lways confuse the kids -

We always say the first number - you know first

So twenty three 23 as opossed to four teen - 41 - 14 -

They get pretty confused after 16 I'd say. All that ten seven, ten eight. It's just not normal.

You do realise we do that in English from 13 to 19 right?

That made me laugh too :o although I guess, technically , we say four ten, five ten etc...

I wonder how some people function in the world sometimes, I really do. Surely all these points are just very basic general knowledge? Do people not ever think and idly wonder thus leading to discovery? Do they never read around a subject for fun (and with the Internet that's increasingly easy and less time consuming). Never just think? I just don't get how people don't know this stuff.

Rhubarb There isn't enough time to idly wonder about everything. Which is why sometimes, you can suddenly see a massive gap in your comprehension. Nothing to do with lack of an enquiringly mind.

The french dix sept etc is fine - its the onze to seize which are illogical in base 10 as are our eleven and twelve before our arse about face teens. (It took me some effort to persuade my DD when she was small that the numbers after 10 weren't eleven, twelve, dig, delve, thirteen )
Words for numbers weren't developed by mathematicians of course.

" I realised that the numbers are crazy."

Come to Germany.

21 is einundzwanzig-one & 20.

Which kind of follows on from the teens where you say it "backwards" to how it's written.

Wasn't it like that in English "Four & twenty blackbirds"?

Also here "Halb zehn"-is half to 10 (ie half past 9)!

I like the revelation about firST secoND thiRD.

I'd never thought about wwwdot being ten syllables compared to "world wide web" being three syllables until Stephen Fry mentioned it on QI. It has annoyed me ever since!

Bizarre.

www is sort of solved these days anyway because we just say sitename dot com.

Y is a vowel in Welsh but W isn't.

I always wonder if there's a word in English which has a double u in it, like uu. I suppose you'd just say yu-yu though instead of saying double U (like double L or whatever).

I don't understand what there is to realise about 1st, 2nd, 3rd.

Just by reading them written as above with digits, you're forced to read it as "first, second, third". If you didn't "realise" surely you just would have no way of verbalising them at all?

Well I thought for years that George W. Bush's middle name was actually Dubya - that's how it was spelt in the cartoons and lots of articles about him!

My email address has an underscore in it. You should try explaining THAT one over the phone to someone in a call centre!

""Another one not understanding what it is posters didn't get - that double u and W are the same letter? ""

I love history, going to historical buildings etc. So if I'm reading something that's shown in its original form, I'd skim over an 'odd' looking word, you can guess what it should be.

I knew that 'y' should be said as 'th', for example, but were there has been a uu, I never immediately said 'double-u, or wu', iyswim.

And I'm usually one of the posters on the name threads that defend the not easily recognised name spellings, when other posters are accusing other Culture's names, of being made up or unique spellings.

I'm always defending accents, as well.

And I know how/why language/weights/measures evolved.

This reminded me of a friend who would not believe me that teenagers were so called because they are in their teens. She was 12 at the time and convinved she was a teenager. (This was before pre-teen was a thing.)

'I don't understand what there is to realise about 1st, 2nd, 3rd'

that the way we abbreviate ordinal numbers is by using the digit plus the last syllable of the word itself. Which is 'th' for everything except first, second, third. We recognise '1st' as a whole word so dont verbalise it as onest.

I always wonder if there's a word in English which has a double u in it, like uu.

Vacuum and continuum are the only common ones I can think of. Oh, equus. Muumuu is fun - double (m double(u))