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

 

 

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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