Other Crap

The Straight Dope: Is it true "W" can be used as a vowel?

• Speakers of French and Russian and other languages think that the English "W" is ALWAYS a vowel, or at least a dipthong. What we think of as the W consonant sound is a dipthong in those languages, represented by "ou". English "We" - French "Oui"
• By the way, you can always tell if an actor has not done his preparation when he assays a Russian accent and says preposterous things like "inwincible". This is the official Chekhov accent from Star Trek, and it makes no sense at all. The question is this - why would Russians, who have no w sound in their own language, start to add unnecessary w's when they speak another language? The answer is that they would not. The woman I live with and her family are Russians, some of them recent immigrants, amd they have no problem at all pronouncing "invincible". Why should they? They have a v sound which sounds just like ours. Where they have a problem is with words like "wallet", which they call a "vallet" because they can't picture a "w" sound.