

W now 6 years old (in the swedish alphabet) thanks to "Webb" - franze
http://wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.se/

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pmjordan
For those of us who can only barely make sense of the Swedish language:

Background according to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_alphabet> :

 _Until recently the letter ‹w› was treated as a variant form of ‹v› at least
for sorting purposes, and this practice is still commonly encountered.
However, in 2005 the Swedish Academy separated the two letters in conformity
with international lexicographic practice. They appear under separate headings
in the 13th edition of Svenska Akademiens Ordlista, released on 10 April
2006.[1] ‹w› has nonetheless been an official letter in the Swedish alphabet,
but sorted as if it were a ‹v›. The loanword webb is a word which has become
rather common in Swedish since 1995._

From what I can gather from the linked post, this decision to include W was
made on the 3rd of March 2005.

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unwind
The text shown is basically an e-mail from a member of the Swedish Academy
(<http://www.svenskaakademien.se/web/en.aspx> is their English site)
confirming when the letter 'W' was first added to the official Swedish
dictionary.

That dictionary (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svenska_Akademiens_Ordlista>)
is generally considered normative for the Swedish language, and thus this
inclusion can be counted as some kind of "official" statement that yes, the
Swedish alphabet does indeed include the letter 'W'.

Previously it was only used in names of people and places, and grouped with
'V' for sorting purposes.

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realugglan
As mentioned on the page we've had the letter for a long long time in the
alphabet, however since almost no swedish words started with it, V and W were
sorted together in dictionaries and other word lists like phone books.

The best part about that was that even though it has a separate pronunciation
(V: 've' and W, 'dubbel-ve'), when used in abbreviations it is common to say
've' instead of 'dubbel-ve', so when the web came along everybody said 've ve
ve dott' for www. instead of 'dubbel-ve dubbel-ve dubbel-ve dott'. Which is
nice.

~~~
user24
I think this is the same in Germany (www.google.de is pronounced vay-vay-vay
google de).

I could be wrong though, I'm basing this off a net radio advert I heard in
german once.

~~~
mahrain
"vau" is V. It's quite distinct from W in German.

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user24
ahhh, so W is pronouced 'vay' and V is 'vau'. I see. I got the german
pronunciation confused with the french (which is double-vay), and assumed that
Germans were pronouncing 'w' as 'v' in www. But I was wrong. Thanks!

~~~
pmjordan
Also note that 'v' in German is hard (like an English 'f'), whereas 'w' is
soft (like the English 'v'). There isn't really an equivalent of the English
'w' sound in German. (thus the correct pronunciation of 'Volkswagen' is closer
to 'Folksvahgen' when applying the [unreliable] English phonetics)

The confusion works both ways, German speakers often pronounce English words
with too hard v/w sounds, English speakers pronounce German words too soft v/w
sounds. It's phenomenal how deeply ingrained these habits can be.

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daniel_iversen
While I would like to poke fun at the Swedes any day of the week, in Denmark
the "alphabet song" still doesn't mention 'w' I believe ;)

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Eugene3v
I really like the domain name, I wonder how often it gets misspelled :)

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petercooper
A mere 700 years after it became commonplace in English :-)

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fauigerzigerk
And the English speaking world still calls it a double U. Maybe the Swedish
should have settled for double V: vv ;-)

~~~
istvanp
In French they do call it "double V". I wonder why in English it's U though.

~~~
corin_
Because originally in English it actually was "uu", not "vv".

See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W#History> if you want to understand why.

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Eugene3v
just FYI, Chrome browser does a decent job in translating the page to English

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Krshna
Why do they have to add a new alphabet just to add new word ? Don't they have
swedish equivalent of the word web ? This is insane.

