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
Tuwu, what’s this?
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
Oh. My. God. I am so disappointed in myself that I never realized these words were all related before. Thank you for this gift.
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.
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.
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.
Wait until you learn about words stating with a silent p, like pterodactyl and ptoilet.
ptoilet?
That’s gonna phuck with my sychology!
So, basically the owl from the tootsie roll commercials.
One…ah-ToWHO…three!
crunch
Okay, unless you want to taunt someone into trying to hijack your Google account or track your info, you should edit your comment link to remove the ? and everything after that.
You do realize the ?si shit is your private YT token right?
Interesting. Do you have any more info on the SourceID token and how it can compromise an account?
