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A Necessary History of the Oddest Letter: W

203 points · 109 comments · NaOH

  1. AnodicElegy · · focus · HN ↗
    The most irritating way in which W is odd is that it requires three syllables to name, while all the other English letters are monosyllabic. This leads to many unfortunate situations where it takes substantially longer to say the acronym of a title than to say the title itself. Take for example, the World Wildlife Fund, which contains four syllables (or maybe five, depending how you pronounce "wild") and whose acronym contains seven. Given how many acronyms contain the word "World" in particular, this is clearly a massive inefficiency in the way we go about our lives. I've started a campaign to rename it something reasonable like "woo" or "woe", but neither Reuters nor the AP seem particularly interested.
    1. jfengel · · focus · HN ↗
      In German it's called "vay". That's brief, and gets a few million people on your side.
      1. anamexis · · focus · HN ↗
        Counterpoint: Ypsilon.
        1. k__ · · focus · HN ↗
          Fair, but Y isn't used much in German.
          1. Ylpertnodi · · focus · HN ↗
            Germany.
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