On the cromulency of pedancy and other questions of English languacy, a quest for our common joy and enlightenment.


And to stay somewhat on topic: Is it cromulent to say "thank you in advance", just to save one empty email/msg thanking afterwards.
In my opinion, saying thanks in advance is okay so long as you do actually thank the answerer if they give a good answer. If should never be used to absolve yourself of that duty, so to me the question is do you reward a good answer or not regardless of how you start the question.
 
So that's why I'll never learn Old English. [in case someone doesn't know the pun is in the hover text].
 
I Wonder, why is BMW pronounced as „BE Ähm Double Ju“ ??
I mean why is it so hard for the English Speaking Part of the World to say: „W“ (We)
It’s also in George Double Ju Bush and others…
 
It’s only advertised that in the English speaking countries,
In Germany it „Bee em wee“ , and who made the advertisement of George Bush ?

Also in Germany, it’s Wilhelm Busch ..
 
It’s only advertised that in the English speaking countries,
In Germany it „Bee em wee“ , and who made the advertisement of George Bush ?

Also in Germany, it’s Wilhelm Busch ..
Bee-Em-Wee would be dreadful for marketing in English, as Wee is a euphemism used by adults when talking to children, or people of sensitive dispositions, to mean urine, or piss. Not ideal in a 'prestige' car name. In the Scottish dialect of English is also means 'small', or minor.
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Ask a German how they pronounce 'y'.
Ha! Ask anyone doesn't have English as a language learned while young, or Icelandic to pronounce th, as in 'the theatre', or say the tongue twister 'Three thousand three hundred and thirty three feathers on a thrush's throat.

Of course Germans have fun asking English speakers to pronounce Eichhorn (squirrel).
 
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Y is „üpsilon“ in German ^^ Or „Icrek“ in French if I remember correctly..

Although I’m not that big van of BMW Anyway: they ditnt made a 125 ccm Motorcycle (only the C1 which was a cool Cap Scooter which was allowed to drive whiteout Helmet in Germany) , but was Heavy, and Expensive and was canceled not long ago it was brought to Market..
they also „invented „ the X6, my nemesis in the Car World..
In the 50tes they made the Isetta, which was cool as it’s door was in Front, and the Concept was the same like on the Smart ^^
But like I said, It’s Wee ..
 
That Wee is not Wee as in "Wii", but as in:

Ach! In zat fideo, he cannot pronounce hiz ths.

In German the letter W is pronounced IPA:[v]
In English the letter W is usually pronounced IPA:[w]

Oh, and hopefully I have not offended any fluent German speakers: The English speakers have no right to complain about people mispronouncing English if they can't speak as least as well in a foreign language as foreigners can in English. I speak three-and-a-bit languages other than English, and I am always made humble by the efforts made by people speaking English they learned after infancy.
 
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I think @netcat means:
dou-ble - u - dou-ble - u - dou-ble - u = 9 syllabes
world - wid[e] - web = 3 syllabes (phonetically at least).

Do you really say "sechsmal Vau" ?

I seem to remember people did just say we-we-we in some language. Was it German?
 
Normally for 'www' in english we actually say Dubble Yudubble Yudubble You, which I count as 6 syllables. Still more than 'world wide web', but if you said that how would anyone know to type three w's instead of those words.
 
Now, the double-u comes from the time that we wrote like: Claudivs Aurelivs, and the v was a longer u ("ooh/u") sound.
But the sound for double-u is not like that at all. Isn't it time to call it double v ? vv = w ( as they are phonetically and visually more similar)
or more logically call it "why", as in: ex why zet (the American way - in return the Americans call their game Rugby and Football comes to mean what all other countries mean by football - so we can have a Fifa Football and Pro Evolution Football and Sensible Football on our game consoles)

And when that is fixed, why not write double-u as uu instead of vv? Just like the Dutch! Dutch has "uu" as a separate phonemic, a sound that does not exist in English. It resembles much the Japanese "u" and the German "ü" (although ü is a little bit shorter).

Here's some links to hear how it sounds:




English to Dutch:

Hut (as in Pizza Hut) is pronounced as if written in Dutch as "Had" ("had" in English)
Hat is pronounced as if written in Dutch as "Haet" (not a word)
Head is pronounced as if written in Dutch as "Het" ("the" in English)

Mapping sounds from one to another language is hard. Especially when you consider that there are dialects and there is not a real official pronunciation (they tried to, but different cities have different pronounciations and they all say they are the official one).
 
In lots of handwriting, double-u is literally written like that with two bowled loops. It's just the way that fonts have developed that it's ended up looking more like a double-v. And you can't call it 'why' because that's already taken by Y.

The alphabet would end up being:
vee why ex why zed
 
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