Kia ora all,
Just interested to know whether it is only us kiwis who pronounce the acronym www (double U, double U, double U,) as, e.g, 'dubdubdub.wordsmith.org' I mentioned dub dub dub to someone from England the other night and they had no idea what I was on about.
Just curious.
Most people I talk to here (Western Canada) just say timewaster.com, taking the www. for granted.
I pronounce it out (3 syllables), but I try to avoid that by just naming the site; i.e. "wordsmith.org." I like the kiwi economy, though.
As a techie-type person, I would have gotten it as I've heard it bandied about, but it's not popularly used, i.e. my parents and non-techie friends wouldn't get it.
Here in Texas, it helps that W is only 2 syllables. The current US President is sometimes referred to humorously as Dubya. (^_^)
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Here in Texas, it helps that W is only 2 syllables. The current US President is sometimes referred to humorously as Dubya. (^_^)
Not only there in Texas. But lest this turn into a political thread, I bow out.
I'm a New Zealander too, but I've only ever heard, "Dub-dub-dub", said on student radio stations. I've been out of the country for the last five years, though.
As for needing to be a "techie" to understand it, I disagree. I still remember the first time I heard it said on the radio. I said, "Oh, so that's how people are saying it now."
I mean "dub-dub-dub" followed by "name.com" ? I'd be worried for anyone who couldn't work that out.
I personally advocate: "triple-double-U", but it hasn't caught on.
I also think we should change the pronunciation of "W" to "double-V". Then WWW could be "sextuple-V" !
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I'm a New Zealander too, but I've only ever heard, "Dub-dub-dub", said on student radio stations. I've been out of the country for the last five years, though.
Yep, we deliberately waited until you left, then we snuck it in. 
It's now common on TV and radio, and pretty much standard among anyone I know under 30.
I thought it was just a bFM thing. Oh welll. It makes sense. You save six-syllables worth of breath. Mr. Shaw would approve.
When we speak the name for the symbol W we say double you or double u or double ewe, and I wonder what is the preferred spelling if, for some reason, you had to spell it out.
This from duhb-yuh, duhb-yuh, duhb-yuh.Dictionary.com
W.w [duhb-uhl-yoo, -yoo; rapidly duhb-yuh]
1. the 23rd letter of the English alphabet, a semivowel.
Why is W the only multi syllable letter in the English alphabet?
Why? Why? Why?
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Why is W the only multi syllable letter in the English alphabet?
Why? Why? Why?
Perhaps because it is quite literally "double v"?
And the question is: Do you spell your name with a V, Herr Wagner? Pronounced Vagner in German, of course. The joke doesn't translate well to print, but what are you gonna do?
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1. the 23rd letter of the English alphabet, a semivowel.
Semivowel?? A E I O U and sometimes Y and half of W??
Would quadrupleU be a full vowel??
a sound with vowel and consonant features: a sound that is like a vowel in involving no major obstruction of the airflow but that functions as a consonant in preceding vowels that form the nucleus of syllables. Examples in English are initial "w" and "y."
w is more commonly a vowel in Welch; e.g., see cwm and crwth.
w is more commonly a vowel in Welch; e.g., see cwm and crwth.
And ys were dotted in Middle Welsh.
Why? Why? Why?
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And ys were dotted in Middle Welsh.
As it is in my ex-husband's surname. Originally ending in ij, sometime in the 19thC the spelling was changed to a dotted y. His family's (north) German, but I guess the origin is Dutch.
Originally ending in ij, sometime in the 19thC the spelling was changed to a dotted y.There is a difference between the Middle Welsh
dotted y (with a single dot) and the Dutch
ij ligature (and, for that matter the
y with diaeresis. They're all in Unicode as separate glyphs.
Oh, oops. A single dot. Of course. Thanks for the clear-up, Nunc.
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Originally ending in ij, sometime in the 19thC the spelling was changed to a dotted y.
There is a difference between the Middle Welsh dotted y (with a single dot) and the Dutch ij ligature (and, for that matter the y with diaeresis. They're all in Unicode as separate glyphs.
What would it look like zmjezhd, a dotted y with a single dot? Where would it stand? left , right or in the middle? Could you show one?
And yes, the ij is totally Dutch: hij, zij, wij, jij, ijs, rijkelijk en klaarblijkelijk ------ he, she, we, you, ice, richly and evidently.
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Perhaps because it is quite literally "double v"?
In my Second Language, Rarotongan Maori, The 'W' was completly replaced with a 'V' just under 200 years ago. In 1821 LMS missionary John Williams came to Rarotonga with his Tahitian counterpart Papehia. They diligently set about translating the Bible into the Native Rarotongan Maori which is very similar in structure and content to Tahitian Maori. Rarotongan at this point was a completely oral language and the subtleties in the pronounciation of the 'V' versus the 'W' were written as the Tahitian 'V' and adopted orally by my ancestors. The W is still prevalent in the New Zealand Maori Dialect.
vvv
Interesting. Although I've lived around among Raro speakers for the last two decades, and knew that most seem to enjoy Tahitian music, I did not know that the Tahitian language was also called Maori. I did nknow about vaka/waka, vaiine/wahine, and of course, anau/whanau etc. Oh, and the crime against cuisine which is puke. Meitaki it ain't!
What would it look like, a dotted y with a single dot?Look at U+1E8F on
this chart. (That's the 9th column, last row.) It's centered over the
y.
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Kia ora all,
Just interested to know whether it is only us kiwis who pronounce the acronym www (double U, double U, double U,) as, e.g, 'dubdubdub.wordsmith.org' I mentioned dub dub dub to someone from England the other night and they had no idea what I was on about.
Just curious.
Kia ora Oll.
Only now I looked at the initial post. 
I'm often watching BBC-TV and they're double U-ing all the time when they refer to programs you can re-vieuw on the Internet. I know it always irritates me a little : 'Come on , get it over with'. Maybe your friends don't watch BBC- TV ? (or are so used to it they don't notice it)
Thanks zmjezhd.
Has nobody else heard people refer to the www as
woo-woo-woo ?
Most English folks I speak with with skip the www part and say "thingamajig.com" but I've heard several people name addresses as follows..."you can find it at woo-woo-woo thingamajig.com"
In French, people invariable say the double-v, double-v, double-v before the address. *
(W is called double-vee in French, not double-U)
*just getting back to the board. Toooo many posts to catch up on so if somebody has already mentioned the French double-vee thingy. Sorry, don't mean to be redundunt.
Most browsers these days will find you your page without the www prefix being entered in the address field. That might could be the reason some folks don't bother saying it.
Why is W the only multi syllable letter in the English alphabet? "X" has three distinct *parts to its sound...
(eh-k-s)
Why is W the only multi syllable letter in the English alphabet? Mah goodness, it shore ain't, Honeychile--there's ay-uf, ay-ul, ee-um, ee-un, and ay-us, to name just a few. And I occasionally hear people say "are-uh". (That last one sounds strange even to me.)
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Has nobody else heard people refer to the www as
woo-woo-woo ?
I recently had an Italian "vuh-vuh-vuh" me, during a phone conversation in English, when he was giving me a web address. From the context, I understood perfectly what he meant. Apparently, "vuh" is (more or less) the name of "W" in Italian. Convenient, I say.
In Spanish it's four syllables thrice repeated ("uve doble uve doble uve doble"). Tongue-twisting and bo-ring. I wanna adopt "vuh-vuh-vuh"!
Us say: way-way-way . As for the v , we would say vay-vay-vay.
Only a small but distinct difference in sound.
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Mah goodness, it shore ain't, Honeychile--there's ay-uf, ay-ul, ee-um, ee-un, and ay-us, to name just a few.
That is Funny.
In Rarotongan the vowel sounds are counted twice. Long and Short.
Why do we even need to use "www" ? I mean, if every webpage starts with it, why not just eliminate it? What's the diff?
Strangely, perhaps, it reminds me of that anecdote about King George ending every sentence with "Peacock!".
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King George III (1738–1820) reigned during the time of the American Revolution and the War of 1812. His political influence declined from 1788 after bouts of mental illness. During one of his attacks of insanity, he insisted on ending every sentence in all his speeches with the word peacock. His ministers cured him of this by telling him that peacock was a beautiful word but a royal one, which a king should whisper when speaking before his subjects so they couldn't hear it. As a result, the speeches of George III were markedly less absurd.
I say we eliminate this absurd "www" from Internet addressses. It's redundant.
Or is it? What's "http://" ?
wwwIt didn't start out that way. The names separated by periods signify (potentially) different machines on the Internet. Originally, www was a shorthand for the host running the web server software. In large companies this is a separate computer from the one running mail or other servers. The toher parts are the company / entity name (e.g., mycompany) and the top-level domain (com or org). There's a database of mappings from these human readable names (e.g., mail.mycompany.biz) to IP address which are four octets (numbers from 0 - 255) again separated by periods (e.g., 192.168.0.1).
The protocol part of the URL (or URI) is http when the transport protocol is going to be the HyperText Transfer Protocol. Others are ftp (File Transfer Protocol) or SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). The syntax for an HTTP URI/URL is:
protocol://host.domain.top_level_domain[:port]/path_to_file (Don't click on this link, my example syntax fooled the posting software into treating this as a link.)
The port part of the URI is optional, and defaults if not given to 80.
That being said, most web clients (the software you use on your computer to download and render HTML web pages is very forgiving of malformed or abbreviated URLs.
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I say we eliminate this absurd "www" from Internet addressses. It's redundant.
The 'vvv' becomes redundant with later wersions of veb browsers once you have entered an address.
'Hypertext transfer protocol' does have it's uses. It is part of the syntax of computerspeak which though not necessary in this instance is vital in other contexts. I don't think making it redundant is the key, rather accepting it as jargon making it's way into the main stream.
for none computer nerds:
http = hyper text transfer protocol
a set of instructions (protocols) for hyper text.
HTML (one of the original "web" languages was
hyper text mark-up language.
www = world wide web (allegedly)
a URL is a universal resourse locator
which really means is an address to a specific server.
computer nerds love initalism
(my favorite, twain (the stuff your scanner uses
=technology without any interesting name.... )
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(my favorite, twain (the stuff your scanner uses
=technology without any interesting name.... )
Mine, relative to colours on the screen = WYSIWYG (Or, wizzywig as us TV folk call it) What you see is what you get.
re: woo-woo-woo and vuh3:
I have tried to use wuh-wuh-wuh, but it hasn't caught on...
wysiwyg is more than just color!
my first computer was a TI99/4a (a 16 bit processor home comupter) it had a 40 character screen.
if you wanted to format your documents, you needed to put in printer codes.
the standard typed page has about 55 to 60 characters (or 8.5 X11 or A4 paper) if you used screen margins, (40 characters) it looked odd (very wide margins)
if you set margins to 60 characters, you couldn't see a complete line of text on the monitor! (it went wide as we sometimes see here)
the solution was to see a 40 character screen (easy to read on the monitor, but to set 60 character margins for printer.
so what you saw on screen, was definately not what you got on paper. (for simple text not to much of an issue, but if you wanted to formate indents, or insert other files (images) and formate the text around the image, its was mental gymanstics--trust me, i know, i was rather good at it!
(i used a austrailian word processor (funnel web software) that was very useful, but there wasn't for the whole time i had the system, anything close to wysiwyg software for word processing!
zmj wrote "It didn't start out that way. "
What he said. 'www' is redundant, but very useful for humans trying to coordinate usage on computers.
If you're managing several dozen or several hundred computers (not at all uncommon), it's easier to track things if you give them names that relate to their function. So, we can have
www.wordsmith.org or mail.wordsmith.org or ftp.wordsmith.org. That's probably a bit of overcomplicated for Anu's situation. But for, say, a university or a large corporation, it can be a big deal.
Computers can also have aliases. So, for example, I frequently use a computer called jaguar - just 'jaguar' - even though internally it's got some funky name the computer service people gave it that identifies what department owns it and a unique id that they can cross-reference to figure out where it is.
Hey eta, if you preface an address with woo-woo-woo people might assume it's a porn site.
Hydra Quote:
>>>His ministers cured him of this by telling him that peacock was a beautiful word but a royal one, which a king should whisper when speaking before his subjects so they couldn't hear it. As a result, the speeches of George III were markedly less absurd.<<<
But who will ever know what he really whispered once they got him whispering?
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for none computer nerds:
http = hyper text transfer protocol
a set of instructions (protocols) for hyper text.
HTML (one of the original "web" languages was
hyper text mark-up language.
www = world wide web (allegedly)
a URL is a universal resourse locator
which really means is an address to a specific server.
computer nerds love initalism
(my favorite, twain (the stuff your scanner uses
=technology without any interesting name.... )
Thanks Troy.
And furthermore, the "www" moniker harkens to a day when only large companies had servers as part of their business. The area that was allocated for access via the World Wide Web was placed in a subdomain.
That subdomain, by convention, was "www".
I find it annoying when I try to use subdomains appropriately (as in http://ponderables.twice21.com) but when relating the URL, it is assumed that the "www" prefix applies.
Due to the pervasive nature of the convention (using www subdomain) many servers now translate domain.com to be www.domain.com and vice versa.
Furthermore, with Internet Explorer, if you type "domain" in to the address bar and press Ctrl + Enter, it will apply "www.domain.com" automatically.
Parkin, I don't know what browser you use, but when I type ponderables.twice21.com into the Firefox address box I get to
this web page or when I type ponderables.twice21.com into IE v7 (or use ctrl-enter), likewise.
I think part of the problem with PT's link is that it contains an unwanted ). At least the link on the post, Dunno about what happens when he types the string, presumably without the ) in.
Yes, the unwanted paren was a symptom of "Fat Finger Syndrome".
However, my point was that ponderables.twice21.com is quite different than
www.twice21.com and that is intentional.
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Parkin, I don't know what browser you use, but when I type ponderables.twice21.com into the Firefox address box I get to this web page
or when I type ponderables.twice21.com into IE v7 (or use ctrl-enter), likewise.
I quote myself, 'cuz nowhere did I use www and, based on this, I don't understand your complaint!?
What he said.
Ta, Fallible, for unmincing my pâté. Now, where'd I put that mantle?
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... my point was that ponderables.twice21.com is quite different than www.twice21.com and that is intentional.
Perhaps ponderables.twice21.com is hosted by www.twice21.com.