V

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This article is about the letter of the Latin alphabet. For Greek ν, see Nu (letter). For Cyrillic Ѵ, see Izhitsa. For IPA /ⱱ/, see Labiodental flap. For other uses, see V (disambiguation).
V
V v
Usage
Writing systemLatin script
TypeAlphabetic and Logographic
Language of originLatin language
Phonetic usage[v]
[w]
[β̞]
[f]
[b]
[u]
[ə̃]
[y]
[ʋ]
[ɯ]
[ɤ]
Unicode codepointU+0056, U+0076
Alphabetical position22
History
Development
Time period~-700 to present
Descendants • U
 • W
 • ∨
 • ℣
 • Ꮴ
 • Ꮙ
 • Ꮩ
SistersF
Ѵ
У
Ў
Ұ
Ү
Ꝩ
ו
و
ܘ
וּ
וֹ
ࠅ
𐎆
𐡅
ወ
વ
ૂ ુ
उ
Transliteration equivalentsY, U, W
Other
Other letters commonly used withv(x)
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.
V
ISO basic
Latin alphabet
AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz

V, or v, is the twenty-second letter in 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 /ˈviː/), plural vees.[1]

History[edit]

Late Renaissance or early Baroque design of a V, from 1627
Ancient Corinthian vase depicting Perseus, Andromeda and Ketos. The inscriptions denoting the depicted persons are written in an archaic form of the Greek alphabet. Perseus (Greek: ΠΕΡϺΕΥϺ) is inscribed as ϺVΕϺΡΕΠ (from right to left), using V to represent the vowel [u]. San ("Ϻ") is used instead of Sigma ("Σ").

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 "u" and "v" 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.[2] The rounded variant became the modern-day version of U, and the letter's former pointed form became V.

Letter[edit]

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, /v/ represents the voiced labiodental fricative. See Help:IPA.

In English, 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".
  • Words that ends in a [v] sound (except of) normally spell that sound -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 short u 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, Q, X, and Z; V is not used very frequently in English. It is the sixth least frequently used letter in the English language, with a frequency of about 1% in words. V is the only letter that cannot be used to form an English two-letter word in the British[3] and Australian[4] versions of the game of Scrabble. It is one of only two letters (the other is C) that cannot be used this way in the American version.[5][6] V is also the only letter in the English language that is never silent.[7]

The letter appears frequently in the Romance languages, where it is the first letter of the second person plural pronoun and (in Italian and Catalan) the stem of the imperfect form of most verbs.

Name in other languages[edit]

In Japanese, V is called a variety of names originating in English, most commonly ブイ [bɯi] or [bui], but less nativized variants, violating to an extent the phonotactics of Japanese, of ヴィー [viː], ヴイ [vɯi] 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/.

Pronunciation and use[edit]

Pronunciations of Vv
Language Dialect(s) Pronunciation (IPA) Environment Notes
Alabama /ə̃/
Catalan Central /b/
Most dialects /v/
Cayuga /ə̃/
Cherokee
Chikasaw
Choctaw
Dutch Some dialects /f/
Standard /v/
English /v/
Esperanto /v/
Galician /b/ Usually
/β/ After vowels, l, or r
German Standard /f/ Typically in Germanic words
/v/ Typically in loanwords
Indonesian /f/
Italian /v/
Irish /vʲ/ After i, or before e or i
/w/
Koasati /ə̃/
Malay /v/
Mandarin Standard /y/ Pinyin latinization; informal replacement for <ü>
Mikasuki /ə̃/
Mohawk
Muscogee
Old Norse /w/
Oneida /ə̃/
Onondaga
Seneca
Spanish [β] Usually
/β/ [note 1]
Tuscarora /ə̃/

In most languages which use the Latin alphabet, ⟨v⟩ has a voiced bilabial or labiodental sound. In English, it is a voiced labiodental fricative. In most dialects of Spanish, it is pronounced the same as ⟨b⟩, that is, [b] or [β]. In Corsican, it is pronounced [b], [v], [β] or [w], depending on the position in the word and the sentence. In contemporary German, it is pronounced [v] in most loan-words while in native German words, it is always pronounced [f]. In standard Dutch it is traditionally pronounced as [v] but in many regions it is pronounced as [f] in some or all positions.

In Native American languages of North America (mainly Muskhogean and Iroquoian), ⟨v⟩ represents a nasalized central vowel, /ə̃/.

In Chinese Pinyin, while ⟨v⟩ is not used, the letter ⟨v⟩ is used by most input methods to enter letter ⟨ü⟩, 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 ü in pinyin and Wade–Giles.

In Irish, the letter ⟨v⟩ is mostly used in loanwords, such as veidhlín from English violin. However the sound [v] appears naturally in Irish when /b/ (or /m/) is lenited or "softened", represented in the orthography by ⟨bh⟩ (or "mh"), so that bhí is pronounced [vʲiː], an bhean (the woman) is pronounced [ənˠ ˈvʲanˠ], etc. For more information, see Irish phonology.

This letter is not used in the Polish alphabet, where /v/ is spelled with the letter ⟨w⟩ instead, following the convention of German.

Related characters[edit]

Descendants and related letters in the Latin alphabet[edit]

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets[edit]

  • 𐤅: 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)
      • Ѵ ѵ : Cyrillic letter izhitsa, also descended from Upsilon
      • У у : Cyrillic letter u, also descended from Upsilon via the digraph of omicron and upsilon
        • Ү ү : Cyrillic letter Ү, 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 /ʏ/.

Ligatures and abbreviations[edit]

Computing codes[edit]

Character information
Preview V v
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER V LATIN SMALL LETTER V
Encodings decimal hex dec hex
Unicode 86 U+0056 118 U+0076
UTF-8 86 56 118 76
Numeric character reference &#86; &#x56; &#118; &#x76;
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 representations[edit]

V is the symbol for vanadium. It is number 23 on the periodic table. Emerald derives its green coloring from either vanadium or chromium.

v, v., and vs can also be used as an abbreviation for the word versus when between two or more competing items (Ex: Brown v. Board of Education).

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ The Spanish language phoneme /β/ has two main allophones; in most environments it is pronounced [β̞] but after a pause or a nasal it is most typically [b]. See Allophones of /b d g/ in Spanish phonology for a more thorough discussion.

References[edit]

  1. ^ "V", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "vee", op. cit.
  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.
  3. ^ Collins Scrabble Dictionary Revised 6th edition (2022) Harper Collins ISBN 978 00085 2391 6
  4. ^ "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.
  5. ^ Hasbro staff (2014). "Scrabble word lists:2-Letter Words". Hasbro. Archived from the original on 2014-04-07. Retrieved 11 March 2014.
  6. ^ Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, 6th Edition (2018) Merriam Webster ISBN 978 08777 9422 6
  7. ^ "Every Letter Is Silent, Sometimes". Retrieved 5 March 2023.
  8. ^ Díez Losada, Fernando (2004). La tribuna del idioma (in Spanish). Editorial Tecnologica de CR. p. 176. ISBN 978-9977-66-161-2.
  9. ^ 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.
  10. ^ Miller, Kirk; Ashby, Michael (2020-11-08). "L2/20-252R: Unicode request for IPA modifier-letters (a), pulmonic" (PDF).
  11. ^ 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.
  12. ^ 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.
  13. ^ "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.
  14. ^ Everson, Michael; Baker, Peter; Emiliano, António; Grammel, Florian; Haugen, Odd Einar; Luft, Diana; Pedro, Susana; Schumacher, Gerd; Stötzner, 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[edit]

  • Media related to V at Wikimedia Commons
  • The dictionary definition of V at Wiktionary
  • The dictionary definition of v at Wiktionary
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