Vav (letter)

Waw ( "hook") is the sixth letter of the Semitic abjads, including
Phoenician ''wāw'' 𐤅,
Aramaic ''waw'' 𐡅,
Hebrew ''vav'' ,
Syriac ''waw'' ܘ
and Arabic ''wāw'' (sixth in abjadi order; 27th in modern Arabic order). It is also related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪅‎‎‎, South Arabian , and Ge'ez .

It represents the consonant in classical Hebrew, and in modern Hebrew, as well as the vowels and . In text with niqqud, a dot is added to the left or on top of the letter to indicate, respectively, the two vowel pronunciations.

It is the origin of Greek Ϝ (digamma) and Υ (upsilon); Latin F, V and later the derived Y, U and W; and the also derived Cyrillic У and Ѵ.

Origin

The letter likely originated with an Egyptian hieroglyph which represented the word ''mace'' (transliterated as ''ḥḏ'', ''hedj''): T3
A mace was a ceremonial stick or staff, similar to a scepter, perhaps derived from weapons or hunting tools.

In Modern Hebrew, the word ''vav'' is used to mean both "hook" and the letter's name (the name is also written ), while in Syriac and Arabic, ''waw'' to mean "hook" has fallen out of use.

Arabic wāw

The Arabic letter is named ''wāw'' and is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:

Wāw is used to represent four distinct phonetic features:
*A consonant, pronounced as a voiced labial-velar approximant , which is the case whenever it is at the beginning of a word, and sometimes elsewhere.
*A long . The preceding consonant could either have no diacritic or a short-wāw-vowel mark, damma, to aid in the pronunciation by hinting to the following long vowel.
*A long in many dialects, as a result of the monophthongization that the diphthong underwent in most of words.
*Part of the sequence . In this case it has no diacritic, but could be marked with a sukun in some traditions. The preceding consonant could either have no diacritic or have a sign, hinting to the first vowel in the diphthong.

As a vowel, ''wāw'' can serve as the carrier of a hamza: . The isolated form of ''waw'' (و) is believed to be the origins of the numeral 9.

''Wāw'' is the sole letter of the common Arabic word ''wa,'' the primary conjunction in Arabic, equivalent to "and". In writing, it is prefixed to the following word, sometimes including other conjunctions, such as ''wa-lākin'', meaning "but". Another function is the "oath", by preceding a noun of great significance to the speaker. It is often literally translatable to "By..." or "I swear to...", and is often used in the Qur'an in this way, and also in the generally fixed construction ''wallāh'' ("By Allah!" or "I swear to God!").W. Wright, ''A Grammar of the Arabic Language, Translated from the German Tongue and Edited with Numerous Additions and Corrections'', 3rd edn by W. Robertson Smith and M. J. de Goeje, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933 epr. Beirut: Librairie de Liban, 1996. The word also appears, particularly in classical verse, in the construction known as '' wāw rubba'', to introduce a description.

Derived letters

With an additional triple dot diacritic above ''waw'', the letter then named ''ve'' is used to represent distinctively the consonant in Arabic-based Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz.

in Kurdish, Beja, and Kashmiri;Koul, O. N., Raina, S. N., & Bhat, R. (2000). Kashmiri-English Dictionary for Second Language Learners. Central Institute of Indian Languages. in Arabic-based Kazakh; in Uyghur.

Thirty-fourth letter of the Azerbaijani Arabic script, represents ü .

A variant of Kurdish ''û'' ; historically for Serbo-Croatian and Uzbek.

Also used in Kyrgyz for Үү /y/.

in Uyghur. Also found in Quranic Arabic as in "prayer" for an Old Higazi merged with , in modern spelling .

in Southern Kurdish.

In Jawi script for .
Also used in Balochi for and .

Other letters

See Arabic script in Unicode

Hebrew waw/vav

Hebrew spelling: or or .

;The letter appears with or without a hook on different sans-serif fonts, for example:
* Arial, DejaVu Sans, Arimo, Open Sans: ו
* Tahoma, Alef, Heebo: ו

Pronunciation in Modern Hebrew

Vav has three orthographic variants, each with a different phonemic value and phonetic realisation:

In modern Hebrew, the frequency of the usage of vav, out of all the letters, is one of the highest, about 10.00%.

Vav as consonant

Consonantal vav () generally represents a voiced labiodental fricative (like the English v) in Ashkenazi, European Sephardi, Persian, Caucasian, Italian and modern Israeli Hebrew, and was originally a labial-velar approximant .

In modern Israeli Hebrew, some loanwords, the pronunciation of whose source contains , and their derivations, are pronounced with : – (but: – ).

Modern Hebrew has no standardized way to distinguish orthographically between and . The pronunciation is determined by prior knowledge or must be derived through context.

Some non standard spellings of the sound are sometimes found in modern Hebrew texts, such as word-initial double-vav: – (word-''medial'' double-vav is both standard and common for both and , see table above) or, rarely, vav with a geresh: – .

Vav with a dot on top

Vav can be used as a mater lectionis for an ''o'' vowel, in which case it is known as a '' '', which in pointed text is marked as vav with a dot above it. It is pronounced ( phonemically transcribed more simply as ).

The distinction is normally ignored, and the HEBREW POINT HOLAM (U+05B9) is used in all cases.

The vowel can be denoted without the vav, as just the dot placed above and to the left of the letter it points, and it is then called '' ''. Some inadequate typefaces do not support the distinction between the ' ⟨⟩ , the consonantal vav pointed with a ' ⟨⟩ (compare ' ⟨⟩ and consonantal vav-' ⟨⟩ ). To display a consonantal vav with ' correctly, the typeface must either support the vav with the Unicode combining character "HEBREW POINT HOLAM HASER FOR VAV" (U+05BA, HTML Entity (decimal) ֺ) or the precomposed character (U+FB4B).

Compare the three:
# The vav with the combining character HEBREW POINT HOLAM:
# The vav with the combining character HEBREW POINT HOLAM HASER FOR VAV:
# The precomposed character:

Vav with a dot in the middle

Vav can also be used as a ''mater lectionis'' for , in which case it is known as a ''shuruk'', and in text with niqqud is marked with a dot in the middle (on the left side).

Shuruk and vav with a dagesh look identical ("") and are only distinguishable through the fact that in text with niqqud, vav with a dagesh will normally be attributed a vocal point in addition, e.g. (), "a market", (the "" denotes a shuruk) as opposed to (), "to market" (the "" denotes a vav with dagesh and is additionally pointed with a zeire, "  ", denoting ). In the word (), "marketing", the first ("") denotes a vav with dagesh, the second a shuruk, being the vowel attributed to the first.

When a vav with a dot in the middle comes at the start of a word without a vowel attributed to it, it is a ''vav conjunctive'' (see below) that comes before ב, ו, מ, פ, or a letter with a ְ (Shva), and it does the ⟨ʔu⟩ sound.

Numerical value

Vav in gematria represents the number six, and when used at the beginning of Hebrew years, it means 6000 (i.e. in numbers would be the date 6754.)

Words written as vav

Vav at the beginning of the word has several possible meanings:
* '' vav conjunctive'' (Vav Hachibur, literally "the Vav of Connection" — chibur means "joining", or "bringing together") connects two words or parts of a sentence; it is a grammatical conjunction meaning '' 'and. It comes at the start of a word, and is written וּ before ב, ו, מ, פ, or a letter with a ְ (Shva), ו with the following letter's Hataf's Niqqud before a letter with a Hataf (for example, before , before , before ), וָ sometimes before a stress and in any other case. This is the most common usage.
* '' vav consecutive'' (Vav Hahipuch, literally "the Vav of Reversal" — hipuch means "inversion"), mainly biblical, is commonly mistaken for the previous type of vav; it indicates consequence of actions and reverses the tense of the verb following it:
**when placed in front of a verb in the imperfect tense, it changes the verb to the perfect tense. For example, ''yomar'' means 'he will say' and ''vayomar'' means 'he said';
**when placed in front of a verb in the perfect, it changes the verb to the imperfect tense. For example, ''ahavtah'' means 'you loved', and ''ve'ahavtah'' means 'you will love'.
(Note: Older Hebrew did not have "tense" in a temporal sense, "perfect," and "imperfect" instead denoting aspect of completed or continuing action. Modern Hebrew verbal tenses have developed closer to their Indo-European counterparts, mostly having a temporal quality rather than denoting aspect. As a rule, Modern Hebrew does not use the "Vav Consecutive" form.)
* '' vav explicative''

Yiddish

In Yiddish, the letter (known as ) is used for several orthographic purposes in native words:
* Alone, a single vov represents the vowel in Northern Yiddish (Litvish) or in Southern Yiddish (Poylish and Galitzish).
* The digraph , "" ('two vovs'), represents the consonant .
* The digraph , consisting of a vov followed by a , represents the diphthong [] or [].
The single vov may be written with a dot on the left when necessary to avoid ambiguity and distinguish it from other functions of the letter. For example, the word 'where' is spelled , as followed by a single vov; the single vov indicating is marked with a dot in order to distinguish which of the three vovs represents the vowel. Some texts instead separate the digraph from the single vov with a silent aleph.

Loanwords from Hebrew or Aramaic in Yiddish are spelled as they are in their language of origin.

Syriac waw

In the Syriac alphabet, the sixth letter is ܘ. Waw (ܘܐܘ) is pronounced When it is used as a mater lectionis, a waw with a dot ''above'' the letter is pronounced and a waw with a dot under the letter is pronounced Waw has an alphabetic-numeral value of 6.

Character encodings

References

External links

{{Northwest Semitic abjad

Phoenician alphabet
Arabic letters
Hebrew letters
Urdu letters
Vowel letters