Pronunciation of "www" - Other Languages

Other Languages

In Afrikaans, Dutch, German, Polish and other languages, this problem doesn't occur because the letter W is already uttered as a single syllable.

In some languages, such as Danish, Estonian, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish it is common practice to say "ve"(v) instead of "dobbelt-ve" in abbreviations, so "www" becomes "ve, ve, ve". This is also used by Romanian, Serbian, etc. In Danish, it is also usual to say "tre gange dobbelt-ve" ("three times double u").

In many languages which give the letter W a name that translates to "double V", each w is substituted by a v, so www is shortened to "vvv" instead. Another practice is to use a numeric shortcut that translates w-w-w as triple W.

• In Mandarin Chinese, "World Wide Web" is commonly translated via phono-semantic matching to wàn wéi wǎng (万维网), which satisfies "www" and literally means "myriad dimensional net", creating an elegant pun on the three w’s and the original meaning. In daily life, many Chinese speakers also prefer the "3w" form, a combination of Chinese pronunciation of "3" (sān) and English pronunciation of "w" (double you).
• "vé, vé, vé" in both Czech and Slovak (Literally means vvv. The formally correct but infrequently used form has 12 syllables: dvojité vé, dvojité vé, dvojité vé.)
• "vee vee vee" (commonly used) in Estonian (correct, but used less often, is "kaksisvee kaksisvee kaksisvee")
• "vee vee vee" in Finnish (The pronunciation of W in this context has been adopted from German)
• "double vé, double vé, double vé" in French. Most French speakers prefer the "3w" form, pronounced "trois doubles-vés" (most television and radio commercials in French speaking countries use this pronunciation) or - less frequently - "triple double-vé". Some geeks say: "waf waf waf" (or "wawawa") which satisfies "www" and literally imitates a dog barking.
• "vé, vé, vé" in Hungarian (Literally means vvv. The formally correct but infrequently used form has 12 syllables: dupla vé, dupla vé, dupla vé.) Sometimes "tripladuplavé" can be heard, too.
• "tvöfalt vaff, tvöfalt vaff, tvöfalt vaff" or "vaff, vaff, vaff" in Icelandic
• "dupult ve, dupult ve, dupult ve" or "ve, ve, ve" in Faroese. Double-u is not part of the Faroese alphabet and is normally substituted by using V in its stead, leading to the latter, shorter pronunciation.
• "doppia vu, doppia vu, doppia vu" in Italian, although the shortened form "vu vu vu" is widely preferred despite being technically incorrect (it means "vvv"). In Italian it is commonly shortened to "vu, vu, vu".
• "ве-ве-ве" in Macedonian (pronounced ve-ve-ve)
• "dablio, dablio, dablio" in Portuguese
• "dáblio, dáblio, dáblio" in Brazilian Portuguese
• "вэ-вэ-вэ" in Russian (pronounced ve-ve-ve). It may be heard in the "WWW" song by the band Leningrad. However, the official pronunciation is "тройное дабл-ю" ("triple double-u")
• "ве-ве-ве" in Serbian (pronounced ve-ve-ve). Another frequently used way to pronounce it is в-в-в (v-v-v) without any vowels. Correct, but used less often, is "duplove-duplove-duplove".
• In Spanish, "3w" can be either "triple doble v", "triple doble u", "uve doble uve doble uve doble", "tres uve dobles", "triple uve doble", "doble u, doble u, doble u", "ve doble, ve doble, ve doble" (Latin America), "doble ve, doble ve, doble ve" (Argentina) or "tres uve(s) dobles" (Spain).
• "dabıl yu, dabıl yu, dabıl yu" or "çift ve, çift ve, çift ve" or "ve ve ve" in Turkish
• "дабл ю, дабл ю, дабл ю" (pronounced "double u, double u, double u") in Ukrainian, although "дабі, дабі, дабі" (dabi-dabi-dabi), "ве, ве, ве" (ve-ve-ve) and (officially) "потрійне дабл ю" are also used.
• "vê kép, vê kép, vê kép" in Vietnamese.
• In Welsh, the standard pronunciation is "w-driphlyg" ("triple-w") - as w is a vowel in Welsh, it is pronounced as 'oo', so the acronym's name is only 3 syllables long.