The writing journey is an unpredictable beast. Setting your sights on a topic, wrapping your head around it, then grabbing pen and paper: it just ain’t gonna happen most often.
Pen and paper was always my chosen path. It felt good, like reading a real newspaper, not an online version. Fast forward to today, when the ink is fading on putting pen to paper. Now it’s keyboards, voice activation, technology moving at light speed. To make the cyber universe even more intriguing, disturbing, and — to be honest — nearly impossible to separate the truth from fiction, we have the emerging tech boogeyman, AI.
Frankly, I am exhausted just trying to keep track of emerging anything! To that end I am going to keep this offering light; a very random rambling that I have shared with many. Most are thoroughly disgusted or bored to tears, but occasionally someone listens seriously and offers an answer to my question.
“What is the question?” you may ask (or maybe not).
First off, I have done zero research on the English alphabet; zero. There may be a perfectly logical answer to my question, but in the many, many years I have been asking it no one has been able to give me one. Drum roll please! The question is:
Who came up with the letter “W”? Was it a single person or an “Alphabet Board of Directors”?
Seriously, it makes no sense. A, B, C, D, E. Each with a sound: short, sweet, simple. Sing the alphabet: it is all short sounds until you get to “W”. “Double-you”. It is not only three syllables, it is two words. How can that be?
There are 26 letters in the alphabet. Who sat down, started at “A”, and 22 times in a row came up with a short sound; then, on the 23rd effort, said “Let’s go with ‘double-U’!”
Did anyone question this choice? Did anyone suggest maybe sticking with short sounds? Did anyone actually put the letter together with the other letters and see if it worked?
(Side note: I also wonder why in the British/Canadian version of the alphabet it was decided to end it with a word — zed — and not a short sound? Zed-ebra?)
The “W” in wagon is pronounced with a short sound (“wuh” if you want to spell it). Now put the actual pronunciation of the letter “W” as the first letter in wagon. Double-u-agon?
It also brings up even more questions. Could it have been called “double-V”? What about the letter “M”? Should it not be called “double-N”? After all, isn’t it just a “W” turned upside down? Makes sense it should be a double-N. . . No it doesn’t! It makes no sense at all. That is why it has disturbed me all these years.
I hear you: “Rice, get a life! Rice, you have too much time on your hands! Rice, let it go!”
Maybe now I can.
