Obscure trivia(l) fact of the day:
When I was growing up, I remember hearing that the vowels were “A, E, I, O, U, and sometime W and Y.” W? I know, for example, that “by” and “fly” use Y as a vowel (while “year” for example, doesn’t). But what words use W as the vowel? Other people I’ve asked have only every heard it as, “…and sometimes Y”.
Thanks to Google and today’s bout of bored curiousity, I found this:
The letter W does not normally spell a vowel by itself in English, but it does so in a couple of obscure words like ‘crwth’ and ‘cwm‘, both of which you can find in a big dictionary, and in both of which W spells the vowel of ‘moon’. That’s because these words are taken from Welsh, in which W is *normally* used to spell this vowel.
You’re right – I must be very, very bored.