Adding to the Japanese segment, the when you type the letter w a lot like so (wwwwww) it looks like grass, so sometimes when something is very funny, instead of using many "w" you can use "草" (kusa) which means grass. 草 is more like "lmao" though so please note that it is not usable in place of "w" (lol). Just some bonus history for anyone scrolling the comments.
The man was probably like: "I don't have any idea of how this works but I love it" *proceeds to assign the phonemes of his language to it, making a new script in the process*
And he was really good at it! I heard a lecture about that script, and it was so approachable that for a while literacy rates were higher in his tribe than among the Europeans!
I'm such a linguistics nerd. this video is so hard to find, with its title just being "w", but I come back to it every once in a while and sob with happiness
@@internet_userreah but there's an issue if you have 5000 videos in that one, as I've had since 2020. (it caps at 5k) Edit: Besides, if you have even over 1k, I'm pretty sure every video in there is gonna be hard to find lol
FUN FACT: The Polish language is one of the very few Slavic languages to use a natural W sound - they use the letter "Ł" to make that sound. However, the letter W does exist in the Polish alphabet, and it makes a "V" sound, similarly to that in the German language. In other Slavic languages that use the Latin alphabet, such as Czech, the letter W is very rare, and is only used in foreign loanwords, such as those from the English language. That also makes the "V" sound.
To add to that: the reason why Polish uses that letter is because Polish /w/ sound is from the vocalisation of L sound in some positions. Another slavic language with /w/ sound is Belarusian, it uses Cyrrillic alphabet and a special letter y̆ for it. Ukrainian also had a /w/ sound at one point, but it has since merged with /v/, and I afaik it was never spelt in a distinct way
You can hear L turning into W in some London accents in the UK. Think a roadman saying "pull/pool" for example. Iirc it tends to come after an "oo" sound. @@JohnDiGrizUkraine
i am repeating this video immediately after watching it for the first time because i feel there is more to be crammed into my brain than what i managed on the first watch. this video is genuinely so funny and informative. if i was a substitute teacher, i’d just put jan misali videos on for the whole class
I applaud this guy for making the RUclips masterpiece *w* and it’s equally magnificent sequel, *c* .I’ve always felt like these letters were slept on in the alphabet community
@@randomguy-tg7ok in japan they often use wwww as smth so say laugh in like text messages cause in japanese laugh is 笑い or warai n people didn’t wanna type the kanji out so they just started using wwww kay thanks for coming to my ted talk 😫
In Czech the letter W is called "dvojté vé" (double v), it was originally used to make /v/ sound, but it was replaced by V around 1850s. Today it is only used for writing foreign names
Jesus christ i never thought a video on a topic im interested in could make me so tired. Im fascinated. Im enamoured. Im so angry. I just wanna go to bed. This is so convoluted im absolutely in love.
I feel like that has something to do with why the Scots say "fit is it?" instead of "what is it?" I think the thing we can all learn from this is that all vowels and most consonants are basically the same.
This is exactly why I will never hesitate to click on a video with normally unappealing thumbnail and title. It might just be a masterpiece worth spending time on.
In German, we actually make a w-sound as the letter's name, so whenever I'm spelling out loud in English, I still sometimes forget to call it "double-u". It's just so counter-intuitive.
in germany i always felt like the V is so unnessecary, however now i know that we only missuse the W for a different pronunciation of the original V, which is admittedly real necessary in German. all those years of V hatred without knowing it was the OG all along. ill never judge a letter like that again.
I just typed "w" into the search bar to see what would come up and I stumbled upon this video, which has taught me more than my previous week of school
For me it was the opposite. I was looking specifically for this video, but searching for _W_ didn't bring it up. Had to type _History of W_ instead. Curse thee, RUclips!
W is only barely a letter in the Swedish alphabet, as it's identical to V when you pronounce it and the two letters are somewhat interchangeable in things like names, where you can replace a V with a W if you want a name to look more old fashioned. As it happens, the province I live in has a name that starts with a V - Värmland - so the names chosen for the two main newspapers here can illustrate this brilliantly. The social democrat paper uses the regular V and calls itself Värmlands Folkblad (The people's pages of Värmland) - a common spelling for the common man. The conservative paper uses W and an older spelling and is called Nya Wermlandstidningen (The new Wermland times) - old fashioned spelling for old fashioned people. -This is only an aesthetic choice, the name of the province is pronounced identically starting with V in both cases. Since our W is basically just an alternate V, it also meant that back in the 90s when you would say the "www-" part of internet addresses we pretty much always said as "veveve" in Swedish.
well if you would like some copper ive got some high quality stuff right here, you can even take a look at my fine reviews on these stone tablets over here
"You've got it set to M for mini, when it should be set to W for Wumbo. I wumbo, you wumbo. He, she, me wumbo. Wumbology, the study of wumbo!" - Patrick Star and the lore for W
Remember everybody the next time you wine, scream, cry and complain about how companies are simplifying their logos remember that the letters of the alphabet have to simplify slowly as time goes on... think about it.
In Portuguese 'Y' is said "Ipsilon", and while most people say "Dabliu" for W, my grandma says "Dobre o V" with means "Double V" from her Brazilian-German ancestry. The most interesting fact is that because of globalization and immigration, we have a good bit amount of person names that have K, Y and W, and while they technically are part of the alphabet, there is no Portuguese word that uses them, so a lot of people don't consider they a part of our alphabet. They are only used in names or words or unit measurement symbols that come from other languages, like Whinderson, Kg, Disney, etc..
People keep only telling half of the Japanese story so here's the actual synapse of "w" in Japanese internet culture. 笑う (warau) is the verb "to laugh" and sometime they'll even just use the kanji as a shorthand to show that someone laughed a little. You'll often see (笑) on its own in stuff like interviews to show one of the speakers chuckled (like writing "Haha" or "Laughs"). Since English is pretty prevalent in Japanese culture, the kool kids started to shorten 笑う (warau) down to just "w". (Not unlike how "haha" was replaced with "LOL" among English internet culture). You can even place multiple w's at the end of your sentences to show the level of laughterwwww Then they took it one step further and re-shortened "wwww" into the kanji for grass 草 (kusa), because the abundance of w's resembled grass. This is like how English internet culture moved from the tacky "LOL" to the more sophisticated "lmao". tl;dr, 笑う (warau) = to laugh 笑 (wara) = laughs; haha wwww = much laughing; LOL; ROFL; lollll 草 (kusa) = grass; lmao
Amazing linguistics video! It's really interesting to see the modern day names of the letters... in Slovenian, W is called "double V", but also, Y is called "ipsilon" (pronounced eepsilon)!
I saw this video a month ago and pretty much forgot about it. Then about 2 weeks later I heard about toki pona and decided to learn it (I learned it btw) and used your videos to help, not knowing it was the same guy until just now. Just a weird coincidence I wanted to share
There is additional interesting development of the usage of w in Japanese internet slang. When you write several w's in a row: wwwww they start resembling blades of grass. Therefore Japanese started using their word for grass: kusa(草) to express laughter.
2712animefreak some Japanese Internet slang is wild because it snatches letters and words from English to represent words in Japanese then simplifies it back into Japanese somehow
late to the party: but in Dutch there is in fact a “triple” u: in medieval times w (uu) was pronounced /w/ this, like in german, shifted to /v~ʋ/, but only in onsets. To indicate the sound /w~u̯/ modern dutch adds an extra ‘u’, giving such beautiful monstrosities as: nieuw (new) leeuw (lion) jouw (your) miauw (meow) etc
The combination of this thumbnail, this video title and the fact it's 18 minutes without any knowledge of what this channel is about is so weirdly ominous and borderline unnerving it's actually hillarious
It’s funny because in Danish it’s actually named double-v. I remember being so confused by that, as well as the fact we don’t even have it in our alphabet
This is actually really eye-opening and interesting. The russian letter y is also called игрек ( igrek) and i've never really thought why is this a thing. Turns out the name was probably borrowed from french much like many other root words in Russian.
In Russia we have a letter И and we pronounce it like E and sounds the same when you read alphabet, and we also have И́ which is pronounced like E Kratkoe - Shortened E and it sounds like IY
And based on that character, ㄚ in bopomofo represents the /a/ sound... (and it just dawned to me that bopomofo was created from Chinese characters much in the same way as the first alphabet was created from hieroglyphs, damn the historical parallel)
@Ng John Oh yeah that; though in the variety that I speak (Taiwan) it's pronounced "iā", as in 丫頭 (iātóu) - not that it's really a commonly used character anyway :p (I think you meant Lamma Island 南丫島? To be honest, if I had seen this name for the first time without knowing the pronunciation, I don't know if I would have guessed "iā" based on the hanzi pronunciation that I had learned, or "ā" based on the bopomofo lol)
I used to watch this channel years ago but never subscribed. Yesterday I thought about it but couldn't remember the name... Tonight this video randomly popped up in my home feed. I'm glad but scared. Subscribed.
Wow very cool info. I love learning about the history aspect of things. Oh, this is interesting in regards to pronunciation. So in German, “volkswagen” is pronounced “FolksVagen”. Pretty wild
honestly i always just thought that it was because some people write the letter as more curved and not pointed but i have to say this is far more interesting
Considering that I've seen Japanese individuals use grass emojis to represent laughter specifically because it resembles "W," does that technically represent a thousands-of-years-long journey of a heiroglyph into another type of pictograph?
⚲, I didn't kno⚲ ⚲hat to expect first ⚲atching this video, but I ⚲as blo⚲n a⚲ay by the research and all the goddamn puns. A⚲esome video dude! Subscribed
not finished video yet so idk if how w as a single constinant is used in japanese or why its used like that wa smentioned in the video, but if it wasnt n ur curious, its from warau/笑う (to laugh). verb ending was taken off, and now wara/笑 it was shortened to w in writing (tho is sometimes written as (笑) for reasons i dunno, maybe bc kanji is more familiar?). so thats why w is the japanese version of lol i believe w is pronounced as wara, but im not 100% sure
11:46 in Polish, the letter "Y" is called "igrek"; until now, I didn't realize that has anything to do with Greece (even though "grek" means "a person from Greece")
![Gunna - today i did good [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ulGLk8TaXcI/mqdefault.jpg)
me scrolling my recommends:
"There's no way I'm going to watch an 18 minute video titled 'w'"
18 minutes later:
"oh... wau"
Get out
ʘ̃ħ ɯ̰̤̪̽̆̆̃̈̈˞̘̯̯̹̹̹̯̟̟̹̘̰̰̃̃̃̚ʘ̬̰̰̪̟̝̩̘̹̝̯̆̃̃̈̚˞̘̩̹̟̘̪̰̰̰̤̈̃̃̈̚͡ɯ̘̰̆̏̌᷄᷈̃̃˞̰̪̘̘̃͜
*"OwO"
@@CasualMitosisCollective and
@@excelvalentino6972 ipa 😏
I got reverse clickbaited. I clicked expecting a shitpost and got a quality vid.
We should come up with a term for reverse clickbait...
Eddy Drouet shitbait?
m a s t e r b a i t
J a i l b a i t
master bait lol
Adding to the Japanese segment, the when you type the letter w a lot like so (wwwwww) it looks like grass, so sometimes when something is very funny, instead of using many "w" you can use "草" (kusa) which means grass. 草 is more like "lmao" though so please note that it is not usable in place of "w" (lol). Just some bonus history for anyone scrolling the comments.
grass.
hololive taught me something new
So how'd you write "Touch Grass" in Japanese?
@@nathanwaterser8218 Since the meaning of the phrase is "go outside" they would probably write that instead.
@@TaIathar It's not as iconic as "Touch Grass" though...
16:46 my mans just heard of writing and decided to invent it for his own language. What a legend
The man was probably like: "I don't have any idea of how this works but I love it" *proceeds to assign the phonemes of his language to it, making a new script in the process*
And he was really good at it! I heard a lecture about that script, and it was so approachable that for a while literacy rates were higher in his tribe than among the Europeans!
@@nathanwaterser8218yo, Cherokee person here, that’s about right yea
I think "so that's Y..." might be my favorite joke of all time
11:47
AND great. you just spoiled it for me! just what i need! you spoiling the punchline to a very funny joke! (sarcasm)
The One Above all you went in the comments before you finished the video
@@cashm5455 Yeah. So what?
The One Above all umm you can’t argue with stupid
Every "wau" sounds progressively more like a sarcastic "wow"
Howtard
Not to mention that the wau symbol looks a lot like F
Wau you can really dance
Uau
"That's a letter. Wow."
wāw
I'm such a linguistics nerd. this video is so hard to find, with its title just being "w", but I come back to it every once in a while and sob with happiness
here's your reminder to re-watch it for the bajillionth time (like i just did lol)
just remember the channel name, that's how I'm able to look up that one mario kart video at any time
Or you can simply like the video and it will appear in your liked videos playlist
@@internet_userreah but there's an issue if you have 5000 videos in that one, as I've had since 2020.
(it caps at 5k)
Edit: Besides, if you have even over 1k, I'm pretty sure every video in there is gonna be hard to find lol
@@Glatier What "one Mario Kart video"? Or, I guess in this case, who's?
FUN FACT: The Polish language is one of the very few Slavic languages to use a natural W sound - they use the letter "Ł" to make that sound. However, the letter W does exist in the Polish alphabet, and it makes a "V" sound, similarly to that in the German language. In other Slavic languages that use the Latin alphabet, such as Czech, the letter W is very rare, and is only used in foreign loanwords, such as those from the English language. That also makes the "V" sound.
Always found that interesting about Polish :)
To add to that: the reason why Polish uses that letter is because Polish /w/ sound is from the vocalisation of L sound in some positions. Another slavic language with /w/ sound is Belarusian, it uses Cyrrillic alphabet and a special letter y̆ for it. Ukrainian also had a /w/ sound at one point, but it has since merged with /v/, and I afaik it was never spelt in a distinct way
You can hear L turning into W in some London accents in the UK. Think a roadman saying "pull/pool" for example. Iirc it tends to come after an "oo" sound. @@JohnDiGrizUkraine
This whole video is an excuse to make the "so that's Y" joke
the madlad made another video just to make this joke again
11:44
everyone talking about the Y joke but not the stigma joke
so that's upsilon
@@SamiTheAnxiousBean what stigma joke
V: "You're weak."
U: "I'm U"
I'm uwu
Ok that was a good one
Good one
@@TimBagels quadruple u
centuple u
This is quite literally the best way to trash talk if you get a win instead of just saying “W”
i am repeating this video immediately after watching it for the first time because i feel there is more to be crammed into my brain than what i managed on the first watch. this video is genuinely so funny and informative. if i was a substitute teacher, i’d just put jan misali videos on for the whole class
B lore: “it sounds like bee lol”
W lore:
hello verified human , how are you today ? have you eaten ?
In Dutch it’s also just wee so I was really confused when I learned it’s double U in English
you didn't have to cut me off
W
W lore
I thought this was a shitpost but instead I ended up learning the history of W
This video is so good even Jesus is learning the letter w
Watch your mouth Jesus
Same tho
Same, lol
It's not safe to mock Jesus
I applaud this guy for making the RUclips masterpiece *w* and it’s equally magnificent sequel, *c* .I’ve always felt like these letters were slept on in the alphabet community
"I've been jan Misali, and /w/" is still a great signoff.
hi emily
"And that's how a bird from a place somewhere between Egypt and Babylon means 'laugh' in a country on the other side of the world"
lmaooo the fact that he liked this comment has me dying🤣🤣
Wait what
What
@@randomguy-tg7ok very nice joke random guy
Japan
@@randomguy-tg7ok in japan they often use wwww as smth so say laugh in like text messages cause in japanese laugh is
笑い or warai
n people didn’t wanna type the kanji out so they just started using wwww
kay thanks for coming to my ted talk 😫
I’m French, W is called “double v” because that IS WHAT IS LOOKS LIKE.
Same in Italy
Lol
same for swedes
I noticed that too lol
This is what I thought as well but unfortunately it's not implemented in my country.
In Czech the letter W is called "dvojté vé" (double v), it was originally used to make /v/ sound, but it was replaced by V around 1850s. Today it is only used for writing foreign names
Jesus christ i never thought a video on a topic im interested in could make me so tired. Im fascinated. Im enamoured. Im so angry. I just wanna go to bed. This is so convoluted im absolutely in love.
Fun drinking game: take a shot every time one of W’s ancestors is threatened to be cut from its alphabet
**blub blub blub**
Now now we don’t want anyone to die of alcohol poisoning here
@@nqrtzy8765 aw c'mon you won't die from those, it could be worse
Take a shot every time one of W's ancestors is used in the video (talk about quick alcohol poisoning)
ahem
take a shot every time you forgot the letter q and x
Wait I though that this would just be a picture of the letter “W” in darkness for 18 minutes
Same tho, I expected a shitpost
im glad i wasn’t the only one 😭
I didn't see the duration so I thought it would be a couple seconds of W in darkness
tbh it would probally get more views if it was that
@@plushcentric me too
I feel like that has something to do with why the Scots say "fit is it?" instead of "what is it?" I think the thing we can all learn from this is that all vowels and most consonants are basically the same.
Can't believe I watched this video two years ago and now I'm majoring in linguistics
Happy first birthday to the most epic sentence ever:
"F, Y, U, V and W all directly descended from a bird that looked like a lollypop"
Fuck i exhaled so fast my nasal hurts
You were just born?
@@selenemoon2832 Huh? No that comment was posted on June 30th which is the date when this video got premiered.
your username is very r/theletterh
@@kornsuwin :OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO A high level cultured person on RUclips?! Impossible! You have my respect
Video title: w
Video length: eighteen minutes and twenty eight seconds
video topic: w
@@HBMmaster WY??
I didn’t understand
What?
I dont get it pls explain
i got goosebumps when he brought up how Maori used "wh" as an "F", truly poetic.
i might be dense, but how is that poetic? genuine question.
@@earlyowlYT i was exaggerating, it was a joke.
@@kshitijvids oh, hehe. thanks for clarifying!
@@earlyowlYT I'm not sure about poetic, but it truly is neat that they hit on the same solution as the Etruscians.
самая интересная история одной буквы которую я слышала. Даже интересно стало узнать историю нашей В /w/
This is like, what if a Bill Wurtz vid didn’t have the music
Good description
He wouldn't be known that well
Or, Vsauce but saucier
@@audreywong7494 lol what?
No one is saucier than vsauce
W stands for: Why the hell is this so well done
No no, thast the DOUBLE W
@@cyannanima2505 Double double you? /j
@@shadowsuzuki5445 why yes ×2
I just ruined the 500 *I’m sorry*
Should be HWĪ
I really appreciate the "where are they now?' bit at 17:47.
w video
This is exactly why I will never hesitate to click on a video with normally unappealing thumbnail and title. It might just be a masterpiece worth spending time on.
*cough* the history of the entire world i guess *cough*
Amazing profile picture
@@heiceonmycreamtillicone thanks. Cropped it myself.
I just look at how long it is, usually if it’s long it will be something completely irrelevant but amazing
Ok
In German, we actually make a w-sound as the letter's name, so whenever I'm spelling out loud in English, I still sometimes forget to call it "double-u". It's just so counter-intuitive.
As a Dutch person I do the same
As a fellow German I make that mistake a lot
But we call the Y Ypsilon
@@zet6549 same
Did this at the start of learning english too. Now i don't do it anymore tho
in germany i always felt like the V is so unnessecary, however now i know that we only missuse the W for a different pronunciation of the original V, which is admittedly real necessary in German. all those years of V hatred without knowing it was the OG all along. ill never judge a letter like that again.
On what must be my 10th rewatch of this video I finally noticed the "Where are they now" section at the end and I'm crying.
I just typed "w" into the search bar to see what would come up and I stumbled upon this video, which has taught me more than my previous week of school
Week? This is more than I’ve learned all semester
SAMEE
For me it was the opposite. I was looking specifically for this video, but searching for _W_ didn't bring it up. Had to type _History of W_ instead. Curse thee, RUclips!
@@wren5962 you must be young, maybe just high school when you sent that
Check out the c-quel y'all
"so thats y" this joke made me laugh so much i had to explain to 4 people why im watching a video about the history of the letter w. thanks
same
"had to" be honest
though you might say "Y"
I thiught the wire of my headphones broke at that specific point. Had to rewind to understand it's a joke. Bravo.
It made me cry tears of laughter omg
"so that's Y..."
You clever bastard
W is only barely a letter in the Swedish alphabet, as it's identical to V when you pronounce it and the two letters are somewhat interchangeable in things like names, where you can replace a V with a W if you want a name to look more old fashioned. As it happens, the province I live in has a name that starts with a V - Värmland - so the names chosen for the two main newspapers here can illustrate this brilliantly.
The social democrat paper uses the regular V and calls itself Värmlands Folkblad (The people's pages of Värmland) - a common spelling for the common man.
The conservative paper uses W and an older spelling and is called Nya Wermlandstidningen (The new Wermland times) - old fashioned spelling for old fashioned people.
-This is only an aesthetic choice, the name of the province is pronounced identically starting with V in both cases.
Since our W is basically just an alternate V, it also meant that back in the 90s when you would say the "www-" part of internet addresses we pretty much always said as "veveve" in Swedish.
thought it was supposed to be a funny thing, but this is way better
“I came looking for copper, and found gold”
well if you would like some copper ive got some high quality stuff right here, you can even take a look at my fine reviews on these stone tablets over here
W
Right
@@mcmonkey26 High quality? My buddy Nanni begs to differ, Ea-nasir.
Yuh
I was just ranting to myself about this then I got recomended this video, the algorithm knows my thoughts.
W video
I clicked on this expecting a meme and got a whole ass backstory for the letter W. How intriguing.
Yeah. And I thought there would just be some loud memey jumpscare in the middle of his calm speech, so I always kept my sound down, lol
Same
Ñ
Ñ
Ñ
"You've got it set to M for mini, when it should be set to W for Wumbo. I wumbo, you wumbo. He, she, me wumbo. Wumbology, the study of wumbo!" - Patrick Star and the lore for W
mumbo jumbo
Wumbo pumbo
wumbo kumbo
Mumbo Wumbo
How did you manage to spell wombology right and mess up wombo... Wumbo... Smh
Remember everybody the next time you wine, scream, cry and complain about how companies are simplifying their logos remember that the letters of the alphabet have to simplify slowly as time goes on... think about it.
In Portuguese 'Y' is said "Ipsilon", and while most people say "Dabliu" for W, my grandma says "Dobre o V" with means "Double V" from her Brazilian-German ancestry.
The most interesting fact is that because of globalization and immigration, we have a good bit amount of person names that have K, Y and W, and while they technically are part of the alphabet, there is no Portuguese word that uses them, so a lot of people don't consider they a part of our alphabet. They are only used in names or words or unit measurement symbols that come from other languages, like Whinderson, Kg, Disney, etc..
There are Portuguese words with K, W and Y
@@kamota8523 there are several that were borrowed from other languages. I can't think of any that weren't. Which words do you refer to?
@@kamota8523k maybe the other two i dont really see
Most people's flexes: cars, having a gf/bf, being rich
My flex: knowing the origin of W
beans
Beans
beans
beans
beans
Letters: Finally, we're living stable lives in this well-made alphabet.
Languages: Y'all mind if I sound shift?
Other languages borrowing the latin script: _Mike Wazowski face_
People keep only telling half of the Japanese story so here's the actual synapse of "w" in Japanese internet culture.
笑う (warau) is the verb "to laugh" and sometime they'll even just use the kanji as a shorthand to show that someone laughed a little. You'll often see (笑) on its own in stuff like interviews to show one of the speakers chuckled (like writing "Haha" or "Laughs").
Since English is pretty prevalent in Japanese culture, the kool kids started to shorten 笑う (warau) down to just "w". (Not unlike how "haha" was replaced with "LOL" among English internet culture). You can even place multiple w's at the end of your sentences to show the level of laughterwwww
Then they took it one step further and re-shortened "wwww" into the kanji for grass 草 (kusa), because the abundance of w's resembled grass. This is like how English internet culture moved from the tacky "LOL" to the more sophisticated "lmao".
tl;dr,
笑う (warau) = to laugh
笑 (wara) = laughs; haha
wwww = much laughing; LOL; ROFL; lollll
草 (kusa) = grass; lmao
草!
Amazing linguistics video! It's really interesting to see the modern day names of the letters... in Slovenian, W is called "double V", but also, Y is called "ipsilon" (pronounced eepsilon)!
In Spanish, “y” said aloud is pronounced “i griega”. When you got to the part explaining “ī Graeca” it blew my mind
in dutch too, "griekse ij", literally meaning "greek 'ij'". (use google translate if you want to know how to pronounce ij)
French too
In Polish, it's called "igrek" so I also saw a resemblance when I watched the video.
igrek is another name for it in dutch as well
in german its called ypsilon like the even older version
Give the thumbnail designer a raise
W: I have the most weirdest name
British & Australian Z: am I a joke to u?
*Me sees video with the title "w"*
*Expects a 3 second video someone *saying "w"*
*Clicks on video*
"Wait what th-"
Dbhdhdsh that's funny because it's true
“iait ihat þe”
this isn’t the chumbucket
@@madelinecook8696 Sir this is a wendy’s
I saw the title ‘w’, looked at the video length, then decided why not
"And that's (Y)" followed by dead silence sent me into orbit. This is fantastic
He prob waited the whole video to make that joke and it was delivered perfectly
@@todddollasign5635 the ‘Thats Why’ line had me thinking for like 10sec. and then skip back
I thought my phone glitched
Time stamp??
I saw this video a month ago and pretty much forgot about it. Then about 2 weeks later I heard about toki pona and decided to learn it (I learned it btw) and used your videos to help, not knowing it was the same guy until just now. Just a weird coincidence I wanted to share
Coming back here after 3 years. This was the video that got me into linguistics. Tysm jan Misali!
When he said “Italicized”, then showed a picture of Italy, my mind literally unlocked. I’ve never put the two together.
The history of the names italic and roman for typefaces goes back to the early days of printing in Europe.
Lol you must be from USA?
@@CrowdedMinds that assumption makes no sense. Stop being so prejudiced
@@CrowdedMinds I'm from the USA, and I put it together.
@@CrowdedMinds That makes no sense
There is additional interesting development of the usage of w in Japanese internet slang. When you write several w's in a row: wwwww they start resembling blades of grass. Therefore Japanese started using their word for grass: kusa(草) to express laughter.
2712animefreak 😂wwwwwwwwwwwww😂
2712animefreak some Japanese Internet slang is wild because it snatches letters and words from English to represent words in Japanese then simplifies it back into Japanese somehow
I dont get it
Euro Trash Me neither dude
I think it because of the katakana ハ (ha) and when you put them together it looks like this: ハハハハハハハ
late to the party: but in Dutch there is in fact a “triple” u: in medieval times w (uu) was pronounced /w/ this, like in german, shifted to /v~ʋ/, but only in onsets. To indicate the sound /w~u̯/ modern dutch adds an extra ‘u’, giving such beautiful monstrosities as:
nieuw (new)
leeuw (lion)
jouw (your)
miauw (meow)
etc
My man made a whole 18 min video about a letter
Dats some serious dedication 💀
So basically, people have always been simplifying logos since forever.
Yea, language and alphabets are all shaped by laziness
The N is a snake
So yeah
Going off topic: I love your PFP I play Spelunky 2
Absolute W
Your name is my friends old username on here
"So that's Y..."
*angry muttering*
I learned more here than what I’ve learned at school.
Google is listening...
Just mentioned to a buddy that it felt weird that "W" was the only multi-syllable letter.
"W?" - Dumbledore calmly asked
a man of culture
general kenobi!
also, why is dumbledore laughing
This scares me because I don't know how to pronounce it
Nononono it's ""W?!?!?!??!?!?" Dumbledore asked calmly"
Since we're talking about intellectual things, let me explain mitosis.
V
U
Ш
W
V V
thanks i understand now
Don’t forget ш before the cleavage furrow begins to split
Fixed
What's the opposite of mitosis? Urfingerbro
VV
Personally I find it very amusing to watch the video upside down and learn about the letter M
💀
Gotta give it to you. You answered the most pressing question posed since the 2000s: "Tell me Y?"
My biggest gripe with the name "double-U" is that it's the only letter name in the alphabet to be more than one syllable.
Dlu could serve as another name
In German it's Y funnily enough as our W us just 'wey' in pronunciation, while our Y is the old 'upsilon' :D
in French, the letter Y is literally called "greek i". so yeah. no judging
What about "elemeno"? That's got a few syllables
Speccy SquareGoLike ikr? I think that is the best letter.
The combination of this thumbnail, this video title and the fact it's 18 minutes without any knowledge of what this channel is about is so weirdly ominous and borderline unnerving it's actually hillarious
i thought it was just about some sort of win. you know how people spam “w w w w w w” after stuff? i assumed that’s what this was.
Pronounce Ñ
Did you know that there is no W in the Irish language
@@ytdude2935 Did you know there is no Ñ in the english language
Yup 😂
It’s funny because in Danish it’s actually named double-v. I remember being so confused by that, as well as the fact we don’t even have it in our alphabet
Fun fact: double-you (W) in French is pronounced “double vay” (double V”
Dooblah vay
In Sweden too you say dubbel v
In croatia you say "duplo v" (double v)
In Spanish it’s doobla vay
Spanish is dobleh veh
in french "double u" is called "double v" ("double vé")
and y is called "greek i" ("i grec")
in spanish it's whatever you feel like [double u (doble u) or double v (doble vé, doble uve)]
@BatJoker more known as "duplo vê" and for y "ípsilon or i grego"
Well, yes, ypsilon is an /i:/ sound in greek
This is actually really eye-opening and interesting.
The russian letter y is also called игрек ( igrek) and i've never really thought why is this a thing. Turns out the name was probably borrowed from french much like many other root words in Russian.
In Italian "w" is also called "double v" (Doppia Vu)
"y" is called "Ipsilon"
In Russia we have a letter И and we pronounce it like E and sounds the same when you read alphabet, and we also have И́ which is pronounced like E Kratkoe - Shortened E and it sounds like IY
when i saw this i thought it was a 18 mins video of the letter w on the screen but its a whole 18 mins video talking about the letter w 👁👄👁
丫 literally means "branch" or "fork". Gotta love that Chinese pragmatism.
And based on that character, ㄚ in bopomofo represents the /a/ sound... (and it just dawned to me that bopomofo was created from Chinese characters much in the same way as the first alphabet was created from hieroglyphs, damn the historical parallel)
@@epingchris similar to hiragana and kanji
@Ng John Oh yeah that; though in the variety that I speak (Taiwan) it's pronounced "iā", as in 丫頭 (iātóu) - not that it's really a commonly used character anyway :p
(I think you meant Lamma Island 南丫島? To be honest, if I had seen this name for the first time without knowing the pronunciation, I don't know if I would have guessed "iā" based on the hanzi pronunciation that I had learned, or "ā" based on the bopomofo lol)
ע
ץ
Multiple Letters: * die *
Phoenicians and Greeks: That is a major wau
heh, nice pun.
wau in the chat
Big oof, wait, big... UW, no no, big WW. I tried
I used to watch this channel years ago but never subscribed. Yesterday I thought about it but couldn't remember the name... Tonight this video randomly popped up in my home feed.
I'm glad but scared. Subscribed.
Wow very cool info. I love learning about the history aspect of things. Oh, this is interesting in regards to pronunciation. So in German, “volkswagen” is pronounced “FolksVagen”. Pretty wild
For a moment I thought it would be about a conlang called W
To borrow a term from programming, maybe such a language should be called a "esoconlang"
@@GibusWearingMann I'd love to see someone create a new programming language and call it that!
OMG SAME
sound inventory
consonants
ɸ β f v j ɥ w
vowels
i y u
can someone complete it for me?
Same
3:50 my mind just squinted a little when he said “JavaScript”
ꦮ
indeed.
This is Java(nese) script
꧊ꦱꦲꦶꦏꦶꦏꦸꦭꦔꦁꦒꦺꦴ ꦲꦏ꧀ꦱꦫꦗꦮ꧈ꦲꦶꦁꦱꦶꦱ꧀ꦠꦼꦩ꧀ꦱꦿꦶꦮꦼꦢꦫꦶ꧉꧊
@@RizalBudiLeksono yup makes more sense to me than JS
honestly i always just thought that it was because some people write the letter as more curved and not pointed but i have to say this is far more interesting
"Hey, want to hear a joke?"
* 20 minutes of explanation later *
"...so that's why Owen's Wilson's five favourite letters are F, Y, U, V, and W."
In french, "V" is pronouced like "v-ay" while "W" is pronouced like "double v-ay"
My French class blew my mind back in high school 😂
Well in Spanish, V is pronounced as "ve" while W is "doble ve" so brothers till the end huh
@@ja4309 French and Spanish are soooo similar tbh being a francophone helped me learn Spanish easier
Dooble vay
@@ja4309 It's the same in Romanian. 'Ve' and 'dublu ve'
I literally haven’t laughed so hard in 3 years until I heard “so that’s Y...”
Such a great joke
waw,great job
😀😀😀
heh? wow more like waw
i am pretending that no one is laughing
I actually thought my iPad glitched 😂
wwww
here's the timestamp: 11:57
As a person who memorized all 26 letters of the English alphabet, i see this as an absolute W.
I can not listen to the video and still get it
Considering that I've seen Japanese individuals use grass emojis to represent laughter specifically because it resembles "W," does that technically represent a thousands-of-years-long journey of a heiroglyph into another type of pictograph?
yez.
yez.
Funny 🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱
yez.
yez
⚲, I didn't kno⚲ ⚲hat to expect first ⚲atching this video, but I ⚲as blo⚲n a⚲ay by the research and all the goddamn puns. A⚲esome video dude! Subscribed
⚲o⚲
Where do u get that emoji
50 subs with no videos by mastering the art of unicode.
Got it through copy and paste my dude
Made me laugh
Wonder how the youtube algorithm knew that this was gonna be a good video by just the title
best video name ever
me: makes a funny joke in Japanese
my Japanese friends: wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
not finished video yet so idk if how w as a single constinant is used in japanese or why its used like that wa smentioned in the video, but if it wasnt n ur curious, its from warau/笑う (to laugh).
verb ending was taken off, and now wara/笑 it was shortened to w in writing (tho is sometimes written as (笑) for reasons i dunno, maybe bc kanji is more familiar?). so thats why w is the japanese version of lol
i believe w is pronounced as wara, but im not 100% sure
Grass
@@v0689 ee
@@v0689 草
草
wh to pay respects
wh
wh
Φ
ו
w
11:46 in Polish, the letter "Y" is called "igrek"; until now, I didn't realize that has anything to do with Greece (even though "grek" means "a person from Greece")
W gameplay: “Let’s get this W(win).”
W lore:
Ñ
@@chupetesuazo2815 grande chupete suazo
@@chupetesuazo2815 you really told them dude. Now give us french! Give us a *Û* !!
@@shely_D7vil û ok here you go
People say dub now. They don’t say W anymore.
bro this actually helped me in typography class thank u sm
"To grow as a civilisation, we must understand W lore" -William Shakespeare
Ñ
“if there’s a hole there’s a way”
-Master Oogway
he did say that
@@justanobody8010 of course he did
Well mr Shakespeare could spell
In French we actually refer to its shape more accurately, literally “double v”
And this video finally lifted the "igrec" mystery from my French classes. (Though I'd have to watch again to get the whole story straight...)
Swedish too xD
I believe I recall that Spanish also does that
a lot of languages tend to do that
Dubleh veh