網上都已有好多解釋：
English uses the Latin alphabet of the Romans. However, this had no letter suitable for representing the speech sound /w/ which was used in Old English, though phonetically the sound represented by /v/ was quite close. In the 7th century scribes wrote uu for /w/; later they used the runic symbol known as wynn. European scribes had continued to write uu, and this usage returned to England with the Norman Conquest in 1066. Early printers sometimes used vv for lack of a w in their type. The name double-u recalls the former identity of u and v, which you can also see in a number of words with a related origin, for example flour/flower, guard/ward, or suede/Swede.
(Based on the Oxford Companion to the English Language)
http://www.oxforddictionaries.co ... ather-than-double-v
The 23rd letter of the English alphabet is a bit of a wonder. The humble “w” is the only letter of the alphabet with a three-syllable name. It is also the only letter with a name that does not indicate its phonetic use. The complications of “w” are doublefold because of it’s name, ‘double u’ and its shape, ‘double v’. What’s going on here?
In English, /w/ typically reads as a voiced labio-velar approximate. In other words, “wa.” However, in other Germanic languages, /w/ reads like “v”. Think of the famous phrase by Swedish acting legend Greta Garbo, “I vant to be let alone.”
(If you enjoy this history, you’ll love to meet two extinct letters of the alphabet, right here.)
In Classical Latin, the /w/ sound was represented by the letter “v”. Through the years, the language shifted, the sound associated with the Latin “v” became a voiced bilabial fricative — like the “v” in “vampire.” Meanwhile, another sound was forming out of v, the /u/. At first glance “u” shouldn’t be part of our story, however its representation and relation to the sound /v/ in spelling give it an indirect and important role in shaping the letter “w”.
To distinguish the sound of “w” from either “v” or the up and coming “u”, a double form of “u” was taken to represent the original Classical Latin “v”, written as ‘uu.’ Compound letters used to represent a phoneme are called a digraph. The earliest writing with the digraph “uu” dates to 8th Century writers of Old High German. This is a standard that came with the Normans into England after the invasion of 1066.
Fast forward to 1300. With the French-speaking Normans ruling England for a couple hundred years,the English language rapidly evolves from Old English or Anglo-Saxon into Middle English. Runes are replaced in writing by Latin letters. The orthographic rules set down for Brythographic (Celtic) languages, however, differ on the island from developments taking place in continental Europe. There the pronunciation of “w” shifts to /v/ in other Germanic languages. Even while letter forms become standardized across Europe thanks to the printing press, the pronunciation of the English “w” remains. Weird way to work with words, we wager.
http://blog.dictionary.com/w/ |
2011/9/24 11:56
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