Pronunciation of "www"

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2007)

WWW (or www) is an initialism for World Wide Web, most often styled in lowercase because it often appears as the first component of domain names. In English, WWW is the longest possible three-letter acronym to spell out, requiring nine syllables, whereas the twelve letters in "World Wide Web" are pronounced with only three syllables. The late Douglas Adams once quipped:

The World Wide Web is the only thing I know of whose shortened form takes three times longer to say than what it's short for.

– Douglas Adams, The Independent on Sunday, 1999

Tim Berners-Lee refuted suggestions to change the World Wide Web name over pronunciation issues, arguing that this peculiar feature of the name would make it memorable.[citation needed] As his invention gradually gained ubiquity, it came to be called simply "the Web", an echo to "the Net".

[edit] English pronunciation

Standard English pronunciation is to pronounce the three letters of "www" as [ˈdʌblju ˈdʌblju ˈdʌblju] (double-you double-you double-you).
Alternate forms include

[ˈdʌbjə ˈdʌbjə ˈdʌbjə] (dub-ya dub-ya dub-ya)
[wʌ wʌ wʌ] (wuh wuh wuh)
[dʌb dʌb dʌb] (dub dub dub)
[ˈtrɪpl ˈdʌblju] (triple double-you)(double-you double-you double-you)
[θɹi dʌb] (three dub)
[ˈtrɪp dʌb] (trip dub)
[traɪ dʌb] (tri-dub)
[ˈdʌblju kjubd] (double-you cubed)

In New Zealand and sometimes in Australia, the "dub-dub-dub" variant is widely accepted (for example its use in TV commercials appears standard) and is more concise than other English renditions. Also commonly used is "all the double-you-s".

In the Southern United States the two-syllable pronunciation of "w", [ˈdʌbjʌ ˈdʌbjʌ ˈdʌbjʌ] is often used, even when spoken by persons who would normally use the standard three-syllable pronunciation for a single letter w.

w³ [ˈdʌbəlju kjubd], is inspired from mathematical notation w to the power of 3. Many of the original papers describing the World Wide Web abbreviated it this way, and the World Wide Web Consortium was named according to this early usage.[citation needed] The original W3C logo had a superscripted 3 and the consortium's domain name is still www.org. However, usage of the w³ form is somewhat deprecated.

[edit] Saying "www"

In many languages which give the letter W a name that translates to "double V", each w is substituted by a v, so www is shortened to "vvv" instead of, for instance:

  • "ве-ве-ве" in Serbian (pronounced ve-ve-ve). Another frequently used way to pronounce it is в-в-в (v-v-v) without any vowels. Correct, but used less often, is "duplove-duplove-duplove".
  • "double vé, double vé, double vé" in French
  • "vé, vé, vé" in Czech
  • "vee vee vee" (commonly used) in Estonian (correct, but used less often, is "kaksisvee kaksisvee kaksisvee")
  • "kaksoisvee, kaksoisvee, kaksoisvee" in Finnish (although "ve, ve, ve" is commonly used (see below))
  • "duplavé, duplavé, duplavé" or "vé, vé, vé" in Hungarian
  • "doppia vu, doppia vu, doppia vu" in Italian, although the shortened form "vu vu vu" is widely preferred despite being technically incorrect (it means "vvv").
  • "tvöfalt vaff, tvöfalt vaff, tvöfalt vaff" or "vaff, vaff, vaff" in Icelandic
  • "dablio, dablio, dablio" in Portuguese
  • "dáblio, dáblio, dáblio" in Brazilian Portuguese
  • "wu, wu, wu" in Polish (pronounced voo-voo-voo)
  • "doble u, doble u, doble u", "doble ve, doble ve, doble ve", "uve doble, uve doble, uve doble" or "triple uve doble" in Spanish
  • "ве-ве-ве" in Macedonian (pronounced ve-ve-ve)
  • "вэ-вэ-вэ" in Russian (pronounced ve-ve-ve). It may be heard in the "WWW" song by the band Leningrad[1]. However, the official pronunciation is "тройное дабл-ю" ("triple double-u")
  • "wé, wé, wé" in Dutch (pronounced way-way-way)
  • "дабл ю, дабл ю, дабл ю" (pronounced "double u, double u, double u") in Ukrainian, although "ве, ве, ве" (ve-ve-ve) and (officially) "порійне дабл ю" are also used.
  • "dabıl yu, dabıl yu, dabıl yu" or "çift ve, çift ve, çift ve" or "ve ve ve" in Turkish

In some languages, such as Estonian, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish, it is common practice to say "ve" instead of "dobbel-ve" in abbreviations, so "www" becomes "ve, ve, ve". This is also used by Romanian, Serbian, etc.

In German, Dutch, Afrikaans and other languages, this problem doesn't occur because the letter W is already uttered as a single syllable.

Most French speakers prefer the "3w" form, pronounced "trois doubles-vés" (most television and radio commercials in French speaking countries use this pronunciation) or - less frequently - "triple double-vé". In Spanish "3w" can be either "triple doble u", "doble u, doble u, doble u" (Latin America), "doble ve, doble ve, doble ve" (Argentina) or "tres uve(s) dobles" (Spain). In Italian it is commonly shortened to "vu, vu, vu".

In Chinese, the World Wide Web is commonly translated to wàn wéi wǎng (万维网), i.e. "ten-thousand dimensional net", creating an elegant pun on the three w’s and the original meaning. In daily life, many Chinese speakers also prefer the "3w" form, a combination of Chinese pronunciation of "3" (sān) and English pronunciation of "w" (double you).