It’s not pronounced /wuh/, like the whispering sound the letter brings to words like whale and wonder. W’s name isn’t tied to its sound at all—it’s a historical nod to its origins. So how did this ...

The Military Alphabet During World War II. During World War II, the United States military used a modified version of the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet (JANAP). This was adopted in 1941 and ...