22nd letter of the Latin alphabet
This article is about the letter of the Latin alphabet. For the lowercase letter of the Greek alphabet, see
Nu (letter)
. For other uses, see
V (disambiguation)
.
V
, or
v
, is the twenty-second
letter
of the
Latin alphabet
, used in the
modern English alphabet
, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is
vee
(pronounced
), plural
vees
.
[1]
Name
- Catalan
:
ve
(
pronounced
[?ve]
); in dialects that lack contrast between
/v/
and
/b/
, the letter is called
ve baixa
[?be
?baj??]
"low B/V".
- Czech
:
ve
['v?ː]
- French
:
ve
['ve]
- German
:
Vau
[?fa?]
- Italian
:
vi
[?vi]
or
vu
[?vu]
- Japanese
:
⟨v⟩
is called a variety of names originating in English, most commonly
ブイ
[b?i]
or
[bui]
, but less nativized variants, violating to an extent the
phonotactics
of Japanese, of
ヴィ
?
[viː]
,
ヴイ
[v?i]
or
[vui]
, and
ヴィ
[vi]
are also used. The phoneme
/v/
in Japanese is used properly only in loanwords, where the preference for either
/v/
or
/b/
depends on many factors; in general, words that are perceived to be in common use tend toward
/b/
.
- Polish
:
fał
['faw]
- Portuguese
:
ve
[?ve]
- Spanish
:
uve
[?uβe]
is recommended, but
ve
[?be]
is traditional. If
⟨v⟩
is referred to as the latter, it would have the same pronunciation as the letter
⟨b⟩
in Spanish (i.e.
[?be]
after pause or nasal sound, otherwise
[?βe]
);
[2]
thus further terms are needed to distinguish
ve
from
be
. In some countries it is called
ve corta
,
ve baja
,
ve pequena
,
ve chica
or
ve
labiodental
.
History
Proto-Sinaitic
|
Phoenician
Waw
|
Western Greek
Upsilon
|
Latin
V
|
|
|
|
|
The letter
⟨v⟩
ultimately comes from the
Phoenician
letter
waw
by way of
⟨
u
⟩
.
During the
Late Middle Ages
, two
minuscule
glyphs of U developed which were both used for sounds including
/u/
and modern
/v/
. The pointed form
⟨v⟩
was written at the beginning of a word, while a rounded form
⟨u⟩
was used in the middle or end, regardless of sound. So whereas
valour
and
excuse
appeared as in modern printing,
have
and
upon
were printed as "haue" and "vpon". The first distinction between the letters
⟨v⟩
and
⟨u⟩
is recorded in a
Gothic script
from 1386, where
⟨v⟩
preceded
⟨u⟩
. By the mid-16th century, the
⟨v⟩
form was used to represent the consonant and
⟨u⟩
the vowel sound, giving us the modern letter
⟨v⟩
.
⟨u⟩
and
⟨v⟩
were not accepted as distinct letters until many years later.
[3]
The rounded variant became the modern-day version of
⟨u⟩
, and the letter's former pointed form became
⟨v⟩
.
Use in writing systems
English
In English,
⟨v⟩
represents a
voiced labiodental fricative
.
Special rules of orthography normally apply to the letter
⟨v⟩
:
- Traditionally,
⟨v⟩
is not doubled to indicate a
short vowel
, the way, for example,
⟨p⟩
is doubled to indicate the difference between
super
and
supper
. However, that is changing with newly coined words, such as
savvy
,
divvy up
and
skivvies
.
- A word-final
sound (except in
of
) is normally spelled -
⟨ve⟩
, regardless of the pronunciation of the vowel before it. This rule does not apply to transliterations of Slavic and Hebrew words, such as
Kyiv
(
Kiev
), or to words that started out as abbreviations, such as
sov
for
sovereign
.
- The
sound is spelled
⟨o⟩
, not
⟨u⟩
, before the letter
⟨v⟩
. This originated with a mediaeval scribal practice designed to increase legibility by avoiding too many vertical strokes (
minims
) in a row.
Like
⟨
j
⟩
,
⟨
k
⟩
,
⟨
w
⟩
,
⟨
x
⟩
, and
⟨
z
⟩
,
⟨v⟩
is not used very frequently in English. It is the
sixth least frequently used letter
in the English language, occurring in roughly 1% of words.
⟨v⟩
is the only letter that cannot be used to form an English two-letter word in the British
[4]
and Australian
[5]
versions of the game of
Scrabble
. It is one of only two letters (the other being
⟨c⟩
) that cannot be used this way in the American version.
[6]
[7]
⟨v⟩
is also the only letter in the English language that is never silent.
[8]
Romance languages
The letter represents
/
v
/
in several
Romance languages
, but in others it represents the same sound as
⟨b⟩
, i.e.
/
b
/
, due to a process known as
betacism
. Betacism occurs in most dialects of
Spanish
, in some dialects of
Catalan
and
Portuguese
, as well as in
Aragonese
,
Asturleonese
and
Galician
.
In Spanish, the phoneme has two main
allophones
; in most environments it is pronounced
[
β?
]
, but after a pause or a
nasal
it is typically
[
b
]
. See
Allophones of /b d g/ in Spanish phonology
for a more thorough discussion.
In
Corsican
,
⟨v⟩
represents
[
b
]
,
[
v
]
,
[
β
]
or
[
w
]
, depending on the position in the word and the sentence.
Other languages
In most languages which use the Latin alphabet,
⟨v⟩
represents a
voiced
bilabial
or
labiodental
sound.
In contemporary
German
, it represents
/
v
/
in most loan-words, while in native German words it always represents
/
f
/
.
In standard
Dutch
it traditionally represents
/
v
/
, but in many regions it represents
/
f
/
in some or all positions.
In the Latinization of the
Cherokee syllabary
,
⟨v⟩
represents a nasalized schwa,
/
??
/
.
In
Chinese
Pinyin
, while
v
is not used, the letter
⟨v⟩
is used by most input methods to enter letter
⟨u⟩
, which most keyboards lack (
Romanised
Chinese is a popular method to enter Chinese text). Informal
romanizations
of
Mandarin
Chinese
use
⟨v⟩
as a substitute for the
close front rounded vowel
/y/
, properly written
⟨u⟩
in
pinyin
and
Wade?Giles
.
Other systems
In the
International Phonetic Alphabet
, ⟨
v
⟩ represents the
voiced labiodental fricative
.
Other uses
Related characters
Descendants and related letters in the Latin alphabet
Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets
- ??:
Semitic
letter
Waw
, from which the following symbols originally derive
- Υ υ :
Greek
letter
Upsilon
, from which
⟨v⟩
derives
- Y y : Latin letter
⟨
y
⟩
, which, like
⟨v⟩
, also derives from Upsilon (but was taken into the alphabet at a later date)
- ? ? : Cyrillic letter
izhitsa
, also descended from Upsilon
- У у :
Cyrillic
letter
⟨
u
⟩
, also descended from Upsilon via the digraph of omicron and upsilon
- ? ? :
Cyrillic
letter
⟨
?
⟩
, descended from
⟨У⟩
and izhitsa and used in the scripts for languages in the former Soviet Union and currently the Russian Federation, as well as in
Mongolian
. Most commonly it represents
/y/
or
/?/
.
Ligatures and abbreviations
Other representations
Computing
Character information
Preview
|
V
|
v
|
V
|
v
|
Unicode name
|
LATIN CAPITAL LETTER V
|
LATIN SMALL LETTER V
|
FULLWIDTH LATIN CAPITAL LETTER V
|
FULLWIDTH LATIN SMALL LETTER V
|
Encodings
|
decimal
|
hex
|
dec
|
hex
|
dec
|
hex
|
dec
|
hex
|
Unicode
|
86
|
U+0056
|
118
|
U+0076
|
65334
|
U+FF36
|
65366
|
U+FF56
|
UTF-8
|
86
|
56
|
118
|
76
|
239 188 182
|
EF BC B6
|
239 189 150
|
EF BD 96
|
Numeric character reference
|
V
|
V
|
v
|
v
|
V
|
V
|
v
|
v
|
EBCDIC
family
|
229
|
E5
|
165
|
A5
|
|
|
|
|
ASCII
1
|
86
|
56
|
118
|
76
|
|
|
|
|
- 1
Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
Other
Notes
References
- ^
"V",
Oxford English Dictionary,
2nd edition (1989);
Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged
(1993); "vee",
op. cit
.
- ^
Diez Losada, Fernando (2004).
La tribuna del idioma
(in Spanish). Editorial Tecnologica de CR. p. 176.
ISBN
978-9977-66-161-2
.
- ^
Pflughaupt, Laurent (2008).
Letter by Letter: An Alphabetical Miscellany
. trans. Gregory Bruhn.
Princeton Architectural Press
. pp. 123?124.
ISBN
978-1-56898-737-8
.
Archived
from the original on 2013-05-10
. Retrieved
2009-06-21
.
- ^
Collins Scrabble Dictionary Revised 6th edition (2022) Harper Collins
ISBN
978 00085 2391 6
- ^
"2-Letter Words with Definitions"
. Australian Scrabble Players Association (ASPA). 8 May 2007.
Archived
from the original on 5 March 2013
. Retrieved
20 February
2013
.
- ^
Hasbro staff (2014).
"Scrabble word lists:2-Letter Words"
. Hasbro. Archived from
the original
on 2014-04-07
. Retrieved
11 March
2014
.
- ^
Official Scrabble Players Dictionary
, 6th Edition (2018) Merriam Webster
ISBN
978 08777 9422 6
- ^
"Every Letter Is Silent, Sometimes"
.
Archived
from the original on 5 March 2023
. Retrieved
5 March
2023
.
- ^
a
b
Constable, Peter (2004-04-19).
"L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS"
(PDF)
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2017-10-11
. Retrieved
2018-03-24
.
- ^
Miller, Kirk; Ashby, Michael (2020-11-08).
"L2/20-252R: Unicode request for IPA modifier-letters (a), pulmonic"
(PDF)
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2021-07-30
. Retrieved
2022-10-13
.
- ^
Everson, Michael
; et al. (2002-03-20).
"L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS"
(PDF)
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2018-02-19
. Retrieved
2018-03-24
.
- ^
Ruppel, Klaas; Rueter, Jack; Kolehmainen, Erkki I. (2006-04-07).
"L2/06-215: Proposal for Encoding 3 Additional Characters of the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet"
(PDF)
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2017-07-06
. Retrieved
2018-03-24
.
- ^
"Roman Liturgy Fonts containing the response and versicle characters ? Roman Liturgy"
.
Roman Liturgy
. 7 September 2011.
Archived
from the original on 2016-07-23
. Retrieved
2016-06-24
.
- ^
Everson, Michael; Baker, Peter; Emiliano, Antonio; Grammel, Florian; Haugen, Odd Einar; Luft, Diana; Pedro, Susana; Schumacher, Gerd; Stotzner, Andreas (2006-01-30).
"L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS"
(PDF)
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2018-09-19
. Retrieved
2018-03-24
.
External links
- Media related to
V
at Wikimedia Commons
- The dictionary definition of
V
at Wiktionary
- The dictionary definition of
v
at Wiktionary