I suspect there's a historical basis to that "rule" as well - the "w"
began as a ligature between two sequential instances of "u" (hence
double-u).  Roman phonology - and orthography - treated what we'd think
of as v, w, and u as all one thing. A doubled u was (if I remember
correctly) sometimes used by English scribes, among others, to emphasize
that the indicated sound wasn't like a "regular" u. The letter thus
started out being explicitly connected to a vowel, and our K-12 grammar
rules don't usually change much once they're part of the institution.

 

--- Bill Spruiell

 

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Veit, Richard
Sent: Monday, November 17, 2008 5:33 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: "...and sometimes w"

 

A student asked me a question that I couldn't immediately answer. In
grade school he learned the adage that "the vowels are the letters a, e,
i, o, u, and sometimes y and sometimes w." He was fine with y, which
occurs as the lone vowel in syllables in words such as by, psych,
hysteria, and silly. But what about w? Are there any English words in
which w is the sole vowel in a syllable? Or does this adage merely refer
to the use of w in combination with other vowels, such as in words like
growth, flaw, and few? 

________________________________

Richard Veit
Department of English
University of North Carolina Wilmington

 

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