Jun
21
The letter “W”
The letter “W” in Spanish is the red-headed stepchild of the Spanish alphabet. In technical, linguistic terms, the letter “W” isn’t patrimonial to Spanish, meaning that it’s not a letter that is naturally part of the language. It is a letter that exists in the Spanish alphabet to cover words imported from other languages. Crack open a Spanish dictionary and look under the letter “W” and you’ll see what I mean.
So foreign is this letter to Spanish that there are four different ways to pronounce it. In Mexico and Columbia, it’s pronounced “doble u“; in Argentina “be doble“; in Chile “doble be” and in Spain “uve doble.”
When foreign words starting with W become commonly-used in Spanish, the “w” is dropped and the letters “v” or “gu” or “gü” are called into service. For example:
Wagon became vagón
Walzen (waltz in English) morphed into vals
Whiskey shapeshifted into güisgui; a whiskey bar, a güisquería
Interesting, never thought of this. I think it’s similair to the ‘k’, only the k remains in loan words I guess.
Ah yes, the poor forgotten “w.” Many Hispanics make the sound, or a very similar one, with “gua” or “güe” but these are spelled without a little ol’ “w.”
@Ryan;
In chat-slang Hispanohablantes often write things like ‘wenos’/'wenas’. I find it quite annoying, but they use it in slang ;).
…and don’t forget wapo, wapa for guapo/guapa.
I have noticed with my Chilean friends the slang term “huevon” (also used in Mexico, used to have a bad connotation but now in Chile it’s just another word you call your friends) they always say “weon”.