Comment by chrismorgan 8 days ago
> no more than “lav” should match “law” just because the first part of the letter “w” looks like a “v”.
Well of course not, it’s double u, not double v… so maybe “lau” should match “law”!
(That’s one thing French got right. Dooblah vay, double v. (Is there are proper French spelling for that pronunciation? Like how h is aitch in English.))
And it's so convenient, too! No letter thus requires several syllables to be pronounced.
It's one thing I keep using from Belgian French despite having lived in Switzerland for over a decade, because it's objectively better.
(Swiss French has the objectively better names for 70-80-90, though. No quatre-vingt-dix BS like on France. :-p)
All the letters are one syllable, except w, which is three.
All the digits are one syllable, except 7 and 0, which are two.
I dislike these facts about them.
It is a double u in English. Naming it differently would be wrong.
I think it's a double v in German. Since French doesn't really use it, they could import any of the names. Portuguese is on the same boat. It imported the double u name, but still has plenty of words where it's a double v... you can't make it all correct.
W is fairly recent in the official French alphabet and its officially called "double v".
In Belgium it can be pronounced or heard as "way" (wé) usually for - BMW as "bay-hem-way" (bé-m-wé) - www as "way-way-way" (wé-wé-wé) - WC as "way-say" (wé-c) .