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A Necessary History of the Oddest Letter: W

203 points · 109 comments · NaOH

  1. tndibona · · focus · HN ↗
    On another note - Indians often switch the w’s and v’s. I don’t know why. If you’re Indian - try pronouncing victory, whisky, and wonderful.
    1. left-struck · · focus · HN ↗
      I’ve always wondered what native English speakers get wrong in this way in various other languages. Anyone got any anecdotes?
      1. lucasoshiro · · focus · HN ↗
        Native English speakers when trying to speak Portuguese find it hard to speak A with tilde (~). Like when they say "São Paulo" they say "Sao Paulo". Ã is the nasal A, which sounds like the U in "sun" and "burn", while the standard A sounds the same as in "car".

        I don't know why this happens, since the phoneme exists in English...

        1. left-struck · · focus · HN ↗
          Well as an English speaker i can tell you when I see symbols around or attached to an otherwise “normal” looking letter and I don’t know how they modify the sound then I just ignore those modifications. I mean, what other choice do we have, if you don’t know how it modifies the sound you can either guess randomly or stick with what you know haha.

          So in other words, those English speakers likely don’t know what the tilde means.

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