BS: Pronunciation of www

Subject: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: MudGuard
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 03:42 PM

Hi,

as a non-native-English speaker I wonder how you pronounce the www (as it is found in many web addresses - e.g. www.mudcat.org)

A single w in English is pronounced double-u - in German it is pronounced "we" (about the same as "wet" without the "t", so we say "we-we-we")

So if you tell someone a web address, do you say:

double-u double-u double-u dot whatever

or

triple double-u dot whatever

or

sixtuple-u dot whatever

or

3 times double-u dot whatever

or

do you use something else (if so, what)?


TIA,
Andy/MudGuard

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 03:45 PM

I don't...

I'll say, "Go to Blahblahblah Dot Com"... Telling people 'WWW' is as silly as telling people "HTTP://"

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 03:52 PM

and if the url doesn't work with the "www" it's more "dubya-dubya-dubya" - But Clinton is right - usually you don't tell people that part - it is assummed.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: Amos
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 03:54 PM

ANdy:

Common parlance is to say the double-yew three times fast: "Dublyadublyadublya-dot-site-dotcom", or alternatively, as Clinton says, just to tell someone to "go to site-dot-com for the description". The http:// is hardly ever even mentioned.



A

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: Rapparee
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 03:55 PM

The "www" is actually the alias for the site's webserver. The machine's actual name might be almost anything -- I've known of them named Snoopy, Dopey, Sneezy, Uriel, and other names. You might very well run across a web address like "customwire.ap.org" with no "www" at all.

Usually, I just ignore it altogether. When the address actually has no "www" I make this clear to whoever I'm talking to.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: jeffp
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 03:55 PM

Not all URLs begin with WWW. One that I work with is http://edhs1.gsfc.nasa.gov

If you try it with WWW, it won't work.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 03:57 PM

double-u double-u double-u dot

I normaly give it as I visit plenty of sites that don't start www.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 03:57 PM

Wibbledy-Wobbledy-Woo?

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: GUEST, Ebbie
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 04:00 PM

To the timid, I say dubya dubya dubya but I would prefer to say
"3 dub". In future we won't say it at all, I'm sure.

There are some addresses that do not use www, right? If you use it inadvertently will it kick it back?

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 04:11 PM

Often, if you use a www that isn't supposed to be there you'll get a "site not found" error.

Sometimes, but not always, if you omit a www that should be there, your browser may supply it for you. Sometimes, but not always, if your browser can't figure out whether to add the www it will resort to a "search for" and give you search results to pick from. It does depend on what browser you use, and how you've set defaults.

The rule always applies: "If you don't know where you're going, you'll probably end up somewhere else."

John

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 04:15 PM

My website is, formally speaking, http://daveosings.50megs.com

However, entering www.daveosings.50megs.com gets you there just the same, although at one time it didn't.

And entering just daveosings.50megs.com gets you there too. Very forgiving, I guess.

In case you're interested, theres a clicky:
http://daveosings.50megs.com

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: Mr Red
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 04:28 PM

I am told but can't say if it is true but - in Oz it is sometimes referred to as three-dub. In much the same way the VolksWagens are called VeeDub.

cresby.com don't need no steenkin W's neither

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: Joe Offer
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 04:32 PM

I usually figure that people are intelligent enough to add the www if an URL doesn't work without it. I tell people we're at mudcat-dot-org.

I've heard people say "dubdubdub," and I like that expression, but I don't use it often.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: MudGuard
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 04:44 PM

Thanks for all the answers!

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: gnu
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 04:51 PM

Many financial institutions are on www3.whatever. More secure?

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: MudGuard
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 04:57 PM

www3 (or www1 or www2 or ...) usually indicates that there is a load-balancer ...

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: Amos
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 05:19 PM

Rapaire:

"www" is not an alias for a webserver; rather, it identifies a class of servers as being web servers. Unlike "http://" which identifies the protocol and therefore the probable port to be used in the target host, "www" is convenient but not mandatory as part of a world-wide-web address scheme.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: Peace
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 06:03 PM

Ememem for the Aussies.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: gnu
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 06:20 PM

I like his tunes. He's from up over?

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: Peace
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 06:22 PM

LOL

or should I say

707

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: open mike
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 06:30 PM

i have heard "triple dub" and am trying to get in the habit of using it
when announcing URL's over the radio.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: gnu
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 06:30 PM

W...W....What?

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: JennyO
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 06:48 PM

Here in Oz, I've heard it referred to as "the double yews".

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 06:52 PM

"triple dub"

That's just silly...

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: Dave Swan
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 07:13 PM

I've heard treble-yew. Not sure it'll catch on.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 07:37 PM

"www" is not an alias for a webserver; rather, it identifies a class of servers as being web servers. Unlike "http://" which identifies the protocol and therefore the probable port to be used in the target host, "www" is convenient but not mandatory as part of a world-wide-web address scheme.

http defines the protocol. The default port is 80 but http can work on any port. A common one for 2 web servers on one machine, eg. a chat server I dabbled with a couple of months back is 8080. On my PC at that time, jonbanjo.homedns.org would have reached an Apache web server on port 80 and jonbanjo.homedns.org:8080 would have reached the chat serever. Both servers used http.

www as far as I know is just a name used to find a server within a domain. The Internet works on numbers and DNS has the table to map the names to numbers. eg. Here www.mudcat,org is the machine with the IP address 207.103.108.205 and help.mudcat.org is the machine with the IP address 207.103.108.99

You may notice that help is the same machine as the current backdoor. Names are again used on the virtual servers (one server acting as many servers). 99 is set to default to the backdoor (but it could also be set with the help of dns so that lets say "backdoor.mudcat.org" was another alias. If help.mudcat.org is specified you get the help foum on the same machine. Things don't even have to have the same domain on the same machine. It would be quite possible to have www.jonbanjo.com and www.mudcat.org, etc. all running on the same machine and server each with their own virtual server - that's how shared hosting works.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 07:38 PM

forgot to supply a name...

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 09:09 PM

How about "double-u cubed?"

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: JennyO
Date: 07 Apr 05 - 10:46 PM

Since we're now starting to get silly, how about wuh wuh wuh?

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 08 Apr 05 - 12:09 AM

Andy, you reminded me of a German exchange student we had one time. I think I'm right, correct me if this is wrong, a German native would pronounce Volkswagon as Volksvagon. My Weimeraner dogs would be Veimeraners. Wolfgang would be Volfgang. Well, this young man could not pronouce the W sound the way we Americans do - so he became a member of the drama team and participated in a play! They said he practiced for months on one line in a Neil Simon play - World War Two.

That sound is more difficult than most of us appreciate. When I first suspected I had MS, I told my doctor I had trouble saying, "Where were we?"

(I once worked with a man from Thailand who could not pronouce the r sound. Some of the men would send him to get "wire wound rod." which few of us could say.)

Also, in the above posts, notice that some Americans say "doubleya" or "doubleyew" and those in my part of the country say "dubya." I live near Louisville, Kentucky. We can always tell "foreigners" because the locals say Luahvull. Recently the newspeople were telling stories about the Pope - he called it Louis-ville.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 08 Apr 05 - 03:07 AM

The stupid thing is, saying doubleyou, doubleyou doubleyou takes more syllables than saying world wide web does!

I just tell people to do a wordsearch for the site name... it's easier!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: MudGuard
Date: 08 Apr 05 - 03:41 AM

Thanks for all the responses.

From them I read:
First priority is to avoid speaking the www.
Second most used version is repeating 3 times the letter w (with your local variation of how to pronounce it - doubleyew, doubleya, dubya, ...).


Mary, Volkswagen (only one o in it) is not pronounced Volksvagon. It is pronounced Vau-We or Volkswagen ;-).

The letter V is sometimes pronounced like a hard F (as in Volk or Volkswagen or Vau) and sometimes soft like a W (as in Vase - the thing you put flowers in).
But the letter W is always pronounced soft.

It is hard to describe the pronunciation with written English, as English pronunciation is even less consistent (example: the letter group ough: though, thought, through, tough, ... or ea: read/read/early ... or new/sew or ...) with the written letters than in German.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of www
From: gnu
Date: 08 Apr 05 - 05:12 AM

Folks Wagen. Hitler wanted a car that all people, regular Folks, could own. The engineers at Benz were up to the task and produced one of the all-time best. Cheap to buy, cheap to run, easy to work on, and tough - couldn't kill em with a stick. I had one for years and I wish I had never sold it. (Of course, I kept a propane torch in it to thaw out the pedals when they froze up and to help keep the windows clear until she warmed up.)