And why is the W silent anyways?
The W isn’t silent, it has a decoy hiding it. The real W is after the o.
because ONE stole it.
Oh-neh
Twah
Three is fine
Fah-oor
Feevey
oh-neh
Twah
Teh-hree
Fah-oor
Fihv-vehOwn
Twoah
Three
Fower
Fihv
The ⟨W⟩ is silent now, but it wasn’t until 1500 or so. Back then the word was pronounced /two:/; it would almost rhyme with contemporary “toe”. But then that /o:/ became /u:/ (the modern pronunciation), due to the Great Vowel Shift, and since /w/ and /u/ are really similar they fused together.
@FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world mentioned that in a few associated words that ⟨W⟩ letter still represents an actual /w/ phoneme, note how the following vowel is different - that blocked the “fusion”.
Curiously in words related to ‘two’ the W is often pronounced!
Twin, Twixt, Between, Twelve etc
Twain.
“He split Robin’s arrow in twain!”
Oh. My. God. I am so disappointed in myself that I never realized these words were all related before. Thank you for this gift.
A few less-obvious associations, just for fun:
- Just like “the house” /s/ is “to house” /z/, “the glass” /s/ is “to glaze” /z/
- Tiw’s Day, Wotan’s Day, Thor’s Day, Frigg’s Day. Note: Tiw, Wotan and Frigg are the native names for Norse Tyr, Odin and Freyja.
- “Flee”, “fly”, “flow” are all related.
- The “mus” in “muscle” is a borrowed cognate to native “mouse”.
By the argument, is the w in “two” actually silent? What would it sounds like when pronounced? I think it would sound like “two” already does.
It would sound like “twu” as in “twu wuv”
Mawwiage!
Lol.
OK, Impressive Clergyman!
It sounds exactly like “to” which means the w is silent.
It is not pronounced at all like any of the other example words given.
I don’t necessarily think so. If the W was pronounced, I think it would sound something more like ‘tawoo’ or ‘teewoo’
twoah
hawk twoah
Spell out that thang!
I wonder if perhaps an older dialect used to pronounce the W. Lots of words have changed spelling or pronunciation over the years, so I’m curious if that might be the case with “two”, too.
I wonder if perhaps an older dialect used to pronounce the W.
That’s correct, and it isn’t even that old - based on the [o:]→[u:] change it should be from 1500 or so. And the modern Scots cognate ⟨twa⟩ /twɑ:/~/twɔ:/ still has it.
Side question?
Does twelve basically mean two eleven?
Twelve’s root is in meaning “two left”. And similarly eleven’s origin is meaning “one left”. In both cases left over from ten, the base unit of counting.
Interesting. This sorta makes sense actually.
Curious though, do you have a reference link?
The last time I was with a woman it was actually twoo, it was quite magical, I tell ya.
Tuwu, what’s this?
UwU
The U is silent
Wait until you learn about words starting with a silent p, like pterodactyl and ptoilet.
ptoilet?
That’s gonna phuck with my sychology!
It is sometimes done in German. The word is Zwei, but it’s somewhat common to say Zwo instead for clarity. The w is pronounced.
I guess the" tw" sound isn’t used as frequently in English. It happens in between.
So, basically the owl from the tootsie roll commercials.
One…ah-ToWHO…three!
crunch
