The unique letter 'W'

[rachaella]

While playing a rousing game of Balderdashlast night my family, friends and I came across a word that incited some quite heated
debate:

Bwlch

First there was, "How do you pronounce it?" But it eventually turned into:

Is 'W' a vowel?

There was the camp that was taught the vowels were:
A-E-I-O-U sometimes Y and W

And those that were taught a similar rhyme without the 'W', who in general opposed 'W's distinction as a vowel.

So my questions are this:

Is 'w' a vowel?
And what version of the little vowel rhyme were you taught?

[RSLancastr]

I was taught it with "sometimes Y and W", but the teachers could never give me an example where W was a vowel.

[7th sextile]

I was taught the "sometimes w and y" version.

Only example I think of is "cwm".In geology it refers to a
cirque,cwm is from the Welsh word for valley.

Also our dear friend Ghengis uses the vowel form of w in his
screen name.

rachaella:ain't Balderdash great for heated debates AND laughs?

[Walter Wayne]

Hmmm ... bwlch isn't in my dictionary, but cwm is.

What was the defintion of bwlch given by Balderdash. My guess is a Welsh burp.

Walt

[Yahweh]

Originally posted by RSLancastr
I was taught it with "sometimes Y and W", but the teachers could never give me an example where W was a vowel.

"W" as a vowel
Who
Whom (the snooty cousin of "Who")
Who's
Whose

"W" as a consonant
Where
Why
When
How
Where
Swish
Vowel
Show

[Voob]

Unrelated point of trivia:

In Japan, many people mistakenly think that the letter "w" is pronounced "double".
So I often see this on bar menus:

Whiskey
S 500yen W 900yen

[Mendor]

IANAL (I am not a linguist), but I think that w is classified as a "semi-vowel"; in words like "water", you could approximate its sound by saying a short u followed by "auter", but it can't take a vowel sound without another vowel next to it to do some of the work.

"Bwlch" looks like a Welsh word to me, in which case all bets are off - in Welsh, IIRC, "w" genuinely IS a vowel, pronounced "oo" I think.

And I was taught A-E-I-O-U and sometimes Y - W wasn't mentioned.

[Zep]

For me, W wasn't ever mentioned as a vowel, and it is NOT a vowel in English. Apart from obviously "transplanted" words, I can't seem to find any English word that uses W as a vowel on its own. In all cases there is a proper vowel (A, E, I, O or U) before or after it that is the actual vowel in the syllable or word.

As opposed to Y, which IS found sometimes on its own, as in RYTHM and SYZYGY for example.

Accept no substitutes! (But I can be surprised!)

[arcticpenguin]

When I was your age, W was not considered a vowel.

[ceptimus]

One meaning of Bwlch: 'A great place to fly model gliders'.

The Bwlch (http://www.knewt.com/bwlch/thebwlch.htm)

[Tricky]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the sometimes vowel "M" yet, even though one m-vowel word (rhythm" has been mentioned.) All "-ism" words containd the vowel "M" as well.

And yes, W is a vowel in Welch, either long "oo" as in "school" or short as in "look". Of course the Welsh language has lots of other oddeties to. For example, a "dd" is pronounch as "th", and the "ll" has no English equivalent, but sounds like sneezing, but with the tip of the tongue pressed against the front teeth. As ugly as it looks written, it is beautiful when spoken.

[rachaella]

Originally posted by 7th sextile
rachaella:ain't Balderdash great for heated debates AND laughs?

Haha yes yes it is! I was the big winner in that particular game.

I believe that 'W' is a semi-vowel. In words like "lewd" it is clearly part of a vowel sound, though does not often stand on its own as a vowel. So I do not believe it deserves full vowel status but does often play the part of a vowel.

[Bluegill]

1) I can never, ever, in my entire life, recall hearing someone refer to W as a vowel. Just A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y.


2) Yahweh said

"W" as a vowel
Who
Whom (the snooty cousin of "Who")
Who's
Whose


I don't understand in what way W is a vowel in those words. It seems silent to me!

3) Last night I played "Beyond Balderdash" as my parents' house. We had a great time. The best part was my mom getting the giggles trying to read some people's answers. Years ago, I was playing Balderdash with some friends, and a pal of mine came up with the single cleverest definition I've seen. The word was tomale (pronounced TOM-uh-lee). His definition was "A comparison to Tom, using 'like' or "as.'"

[Mendor]

Originally posted by Bluegill

I don't understand in what way W is a vowel in those words. It seems silent to me!Hmm, that's interesting. Do most people pronounce these words "hoo, hoom, hooz"? I pronounce them with a "hw" sound at the start, and I'm wondering if that's just a British thing, or maybe just a Scottish thing.

[ceptimus]

Fred Dibnah pronounces both the W and the H of 'whole'

[rachaella]

Originally posted by Bluegill
3) Last night I played "Beyond Balderdash" as my parents' house. We had a great time. The best part was my mom getting the giggles trying to read some people's answers.

Some of my fondest memories of my grandfather before he died were of him playing Beyond Balderdash with us. The last time we played he laughed so hard trying to read an answer that his face turned beat red and it seemed he was just a hair away from going into cardiac arrest. It was the most fun I'd ever seen him have.

[tim]

Originally posted by ceptimus
Fred Dibnah pronounces both the W and the H of 'whole'

Yeah, but lovely man though he is, he comes from Lancashire and therefore does not speak English.
The 'w' in who is silent as far as I am concerned. A bit like the 'p' in the bath.

[Mr Manifesto]

Originally posted by Yahweh


"W" as a vowel
Who
Whom (the snooty cousin of "Who")
Who's
Whose

"W" as a consonant
Where
Why
When
How
Where
Swish
Vowel
Show

"W" is a vowel in "why" I was taught. And I take my Australian teacher's informed opinion over your crappy Yank grab-'em-out-of-the-soup-kitchen-line so-called 'teacher' opinion. <---- :D

[sorgoth]

Originally posted by Mendor
Hmm, that's interesting. Do most people pronounce these words "hoo, hoom, hooz"? I pronounce them with a "hw" sound at the start, and I'm wondering if that's just a British thing, or maybe just a Scottish thing.


Yes, most people do.

[Voob]

We used to laugh our a*ses off playing Balderdash back in college. We'd include an example sentence with the definition.

Dolor--extreme pain
"Dolor screamed through Jack's loins as he......"

[COCT]

I've never heard of "W as a vowel" before this thread. But back in grammar school, a teacher told me that the letter "y" is considered a vowel if it is in a word that is made plural by dropping the "y" and adding "ies" (such as baby/babies or lobby/lobbies).

Hmm....

COCT

[BPSCG]

Originally posted by COCT
... teacher told me that the letter "y" is considered a vowel if it is in a word that is made plural by dropping the "y" and adding "ies" (such as baby/babies or lobby/lobbies).

So it's a vowel in "baby", but not in "monkey"? Hardly seems right - the only significant difference between the two words is that the "e" in "monkey" means you pluralize (is that a word?) it by just adding "s". But the sound made by the "y" is identical in both words.

[BPSCG]

Great.

Even the dictionaries don't know (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=vowel), or at least they don't agree.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language says no, Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary says yes.

[DrMatt]

Originally posted by Bluegill
1) I can never, ever, in my entire life, recall hearing someone refer to W as a vowel. Just A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y.


2) Yahweh said


I don't understand in what way W is a vowel in those words. It seems silent to me!


Ah.
Awwww.

[Bluegill]

Originally posted by DrMatt


Ah.
Awwww.

Hmmm?:confused:

[Lemastre]

W is a vowel, at least in Welsh and for all I know in other languages, too. The fact that it's called " double U" may suggest substituting two U's for it and giving it a new life in American English, where we could make new spellings of words, similar to doubling the O. Maybe "buutch" for "butch" to indicate a sound different from the U in "hutch." Thus, "bwtch" and "buutch" would both be correct spellings. And how do we come to pronounce "why" as "hwy" and "whole" as "hole"? No wonder English is hard to learn.

[Astroglide]

I was taught "AEIOU, sometimes Y, and sometimes W".

This was in a Christian elementary/junior high school (for which I am scarred for life) long ago.

I wasn't given any example words (although later I learned cwm).

The dictionary.com has a FAQ (http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/w/w-as-vowel.html):

Q. Are there any words that use w as a vowel?
A. Yes.
Cwm (a steep-walled semicircular basin in a mountain, sometimes containing a lake; a cirque) and crwth (an ancient Celtic musical instrument), both from the Welsh, use w as a vowel--standing for the same sound that "oo" stands for in boom and booth. Crwth is also spelled "crowd."

[kerfer]

Originally posted by RSLancastr
I was taught it with "sometimes Y and W", but the teachers could never give me an example where W was a vowel.

The easiest example I can think of is in the place of a 'silent' vowel, whose only is to modify the behavior of another vowel in a word.

For example, in the word bow (as in the thing that you tie, not the front of a boat), or tow, the w is functioning as a vowel...you'd pronounce it the same if there was an 'e' where the 'w' is.

At least that's how we've 'splained it to our young chilluns whe are trying to figure this out.

Zat hepp?

[Abdul Alhazred]

Originally posted by rachaella
While playing a rousing game of Balderdashlast night my family, friends and I came across a word that incited some quite heated
debate:

Bwlch

First there was, "How do you pronounce it?" But it eventually turned into:

Is 'W' a vowel?

There was the camp that was taught the vowels were:
A-E-I-O-U sometimes Y and W

And those that were taught a similar rhyme without the 'W', who in general opposed 'W's distinction as a vowel.

So my questions are this:

Is 'w' a vowel?
And what version of the little vowel rhyme were you taught?

Why and double-you?

In English at least, 'W' is the only letter with a polysyllabic name. In other languages using the Roman alphabet it is often joined in that distinction by 'Y'.

I griega -- Spanish
I grec -- French
Ipsilon -- Italian

The letter 'Y' must be Greek? Did the Romans use it at all? Or only in Greek words?

In general, the names for the Roman letters in various European languages that use them differ only in that the pronunciation of the actual letters vary. Greek on the other hand has real "names" for all of theirs.

There are a few exceptions such as 'H'.

aitch -- English
ache -- Spanish
ache -- French (but not pronounced like Spanish)
etc.

These all seem to be cognates, but not related to the pronunciation.

Why 'why' for 'Y'.

The various names for 'W' seem to be cognates with 'double U' or 'double V'.

So how about it you speakers of other languages?

Give me more names for 'H' 'Y' 'W' or any other oddities you might know.

Thank you.

[Abdul Alhazred]

Originally posted by Yahweh


"W" as a vowel
Who
Whom (the snooty cousin of "Who")
Who's
Whose

"W" as a consonant
Where
Why
When
How
Where
Swish
Vowel
Show

Hey HaShem!

(I won't use your screen name for fear of blasphemy, but in case you are the real thing I'll keep it respectful. :p )

In your 'W' as a vowel examples 'W' is silent. You might as well call "'K' as in knife" a vowel.

In your 'W' as a consonant examples, 'W' is a 'U' plus other vowel diphthong:

Where -- Huer
Why -- Huai
When -- Huen
How -- Hau
Swish -- Suish
Vowel -- Vauel

Verdict: 'W' is a vauel.

[Professor Frink]

My 3-year old son was learning how to figure out what letter certain words start with ("milk" starts with "m", etc.) and one day he announced to everyone in the room that W starts with 'D'.

So, according to the little ones, it is neither a consonant or vowel, but a word in itself.

Frink

[hgc]

http://www.scrabo.com/mad34.jpg

[Rat]

I don't know why folks lose so much sleep over it. To me, it's a consonant. In Welsh it is, undoubtedly, a vowel. In English, it contributes to vowel sounds, but is not, in itself, a vowel.

At least someone has pointed out that H is 'aitch'. The next person to say 'haitch' will feel my wrath. And it is quite a thing to feel; take my word for it.

"Well it sounds like 'H' so it must be 'haitch'"
"Do you also say 'feff' and 'lelll'? 'Mem'? ''Wubblewoo'?

Cheers,
Rat.

[DrMatt]

Originally posted by hgc
http://www.scrabo.com/mad34.jpg

Now, that's maddening...

I'd just like to point out that W is unique. No other letter in the alphabet is W.