An ewythr elc ønce bit my sister…
Ewe and you have the same pronunciation? They sound different to me, the first has a slightly longer and more pronounced “e” sound (think ee-yu) while the second doesn’t have that slight “pause” (for me at least) and comes out just yu (or, perhaps, [sub]e[/sub]yu, the "e"ish sound is there, but barely noticeable in this example).
Then again I’ve been told I talk weird…
I’ve just checked in three dictionaries (two from the US, one Australian) and they give the same pronunciation key for “ewe” and “you”.
For me, “ewe” is like “you”, but it’s different from “ew” as in “Ew, that’s disgusting”, my version of which, I suspect, is akin to what Jragon uses for “ewe”.
I’ve always wondered why English seems to be nearly the only language with a “w” sound. Not many other languages have a w and most of the ones that do pronounce it like we pronounce our “v.” To my knowledge, only Polish has an equivalent to our w and they make it with some kind of crazy L figure.
Japanese kind of does, but the “w” sound, when speaking, generally seems to extend from the preceding word more often than being deliberately pronounced - an “implied” w if you will. (There are two characters Romanized with "w"s, “wa” and “wo”, though the latter is realistically pronounced “o” and the former is more an inflection on the “a” that sounds a lot like a w but still not quite, [disclaimer]at least in the accents of the few people I regularly hear speaking Japanese[/disclaimer]).
Spanish, French, and Italian all have /w/ sounds, though each with their own idiosyncratic phonological rules for it…
It’s pretty limited though isn’t it? I think I read that, in French at least, the w sound really only comes in through import words.
Like “oui”?
Arabic, Hawaiian, Bengali, and some dialects of Hindustani/Hindi-Urdu have [w]. Add those up with English, French, and Spanish and I think you’re nearing a majority of the world’s population.
Better examples of “w” as a vowel:
“How now brown cow?”
Thanks for that, but all I can think is - Why on Earth does the Welsh language have a word for moose?
There are mooses in Europe. They’re called elks.
Or “bourgeois”.
Ha - I am not now, nor have I ever been, Uncle Elk.:o
Actually, I’ve realized there must be mooses in Europe and Asia. Otherwise, how would Boris and Natasha have known about them?
MEESE! For the last time, it’s one mouse, two meese, and three elken.
Confusing mooses and elks :dubious:
Confusing mooses and meeses 
Dutch has very distinct w’s. Some words: wie, wat, waar, waarom (who, what, where and why) are pronounced with very strong w-sounds. The w is pronounced the same whether the sound is in the beginning, or middle of the word (huwelijk, houweel [marriage, pick]) but differently when at the end of a word (ruw, brouw [rough, brew]), where it is much softer.
In addition to meaning cupboard, a lot of my Welsh friends use cwtch to mean something like ‘a really loving hug,’ enough that a few non-Welsh speakers I know use it.
Davies is a very common name in England too, and presumably in Wales, though it does, of course, definitely originate in Wales.
Can anyone enlighten me? I don’t know this joke.
The pirate is asked about the wheel attached to his genitalia, and replies, “Aaaar, it’s drivin’ me nuts!”