# Common words where W is a vowel

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052>\
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\
**Created:** [April 28, 2011, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052 "2011-04-28T16:41:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 6

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**Author:** ![Powers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Powers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Powers)\
**Post date:** [May 6, 2011, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/101 "2011-05-06T01:06:36Z")

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> [@guizot](#):
>
> This mistaken notion that the letters somehow drive the pronunciation of a language is what I meant by saying “all letters are silent.” Language is speech, first.

Again, I was responding to another poster, who clearly was speaking in the colloquial sense (as I was when I wrote “speaking” there just now). If you’re saying he was correct to say the “w” in “bawl” is silent because ALL letters are silent, I think you’re missing the point.  
Powers &8^]

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**Author:** ![Powers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Powers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Powers)\
**Post date:** [May 6, 2011, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/common-words-where-w-is-a-vowel/580052/102 "2011-05-06T01:08:17Z")

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> [@Indistinguishable](#):
>
> Might as well nip that confusion in the bud by explaining, at some introductory level, how friction and air resistance account for the apparent discrepancies; you don’t have to go into the actual equations of friction and air resistance in order to say “These are phenomena that exist which roughly behave like so-and-so but which we are going to ignore in our models of the world for now”.

Yes, this is my fault. I misread the post as saying “leave out the incorrect pieces _and_ the simplifications” rather than “leave out the incorrect pieces _in_ the simplifications”. Leaving out the simplifications would make introductory physics ridiculously hard to pick up, but I now see that wasn’t what was meant at all.  
Powers &8^]

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