V, or v, is the twenty-second letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is vee (pronounced ), plural vees.["V", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "vee", op. cit.]
Name
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; in dialects that Betacism and , the letter is called ve baixa ().
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or vu
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Japanese: is called a variety of names that approximate its English name, most commonly ブイ or ; still, less nativized variants, violating to an extent Japanese phonotactics, such as ヴィー , ヴイ or , and ヴィ , are also used. The phoneme in Japanese is used properly only in loanwords, where the preference for either or depends on many factors; in general, words that are perceived to be in common use tend toward .
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; ⟨v⟩ is not used in native vocabulary, where the /v/ sound is instead represented by ⟨w⟩.
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is recommended by the RAE,
History
The letter ultimately comes from the Phoenician letter waw by way of .
During the Late Middle Ages, two glyphs of U developed which were both used for sounds including and modern . The pointed form was written at the beginning of a word, while a rounded form 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 and is recorded in a Blackletter from 1386, where preceded . By the mid-16th century, the form was used to represent the consonant and the vowel sound, giving us the modern letter . and were not accepted as distinct letters until many years later.
Use in writing systems
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English
In English, represents a voiced labiodental fricative.
Special rules of orthography normally apply to the letter :
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Traditionally, is not doubled to indicate a short vowel, the way, for example, is doubled to indicate the difference between super and supper. However, that is changing with newly coined words, such as , divvy up and skivvies.
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A word-final sound (except in of) is normally spelled -, 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.
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The sound is spelled , not , before the letter . This originated with a mediaeval scribal practice designed to increase legibility by avoiding too many vertical strokes (minims) in a row.
Like , , , and , is not used very frequently in English. It is the Letter frequency in the English language, occurring in roughly 1% of words. is the only letter that cannot be used to form an English two-letter word in the British[Collins Scrabble Dictionary Revised 6th edition (2022) Harper Collins ] and Australian[Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, 6th Edition (2018) Merriam Webster ] is also the only letter in the English language that is never silent.
Romance languages
The letter represents in several Romance languages, but in others it represents the same sound as , i.e. , due to a process known as
betacism. Betacism occurs in most dialects of
Spanish language, in some dialects of
Catalan language and Portuguese, as well as in Aragonese, Asturleonese and Galician.
In Spanish, the phoneme has two main allophones; in most environments, it is pronounced , but after a pause or a Nasal consonant it is typically . See Allophones of /b d g/ in Spanish phonology for a more thorough discussion.
In Corsican, represents , , or , depending on the position in the word and the sentence.
Other languages
In most languages that use the Latin alphabet, represents a
voiced bilabial or
labiodental sound.
In contemporary German language, it represents in most loanwords, while in native German words, it always represents .
In standard Dutch language, it traditionally represents , but in many regions, it represents in some or all positions.
In the Latinization of the Cherokee syllabary, represents a nasalized schwa, .
In Chinese language pinyin, while is not used, the letter is used by most input methods to enter the letter , which most keyboards lack (romanized-input Chinese is a popular method to enter Chinese text). Informal romanizations of Mandarin Chinese language use as a substitute for the close front rounded vowel /y/, properly written in both pinyin and Wade–Giles.
Other systems
In the
International Phonetic Alphabet, represents the voiced labiodental fricative.
Other uses
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V is used to represent the Roman numerals 5.
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V is the symbol for vanadium. It is number 23 on the periodic table. Emerald derives its green coloring from either vanadium or chromium.
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v, v., and vs can also be used as an abbreviation for the word when between two or more competing items (e.g. Brown v. Board of Education).
Related characters
Descendants and related letters in the Latin alphabet
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U u : Latin letter , originally the same letter as
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W w : Latin letter , descended from
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Ỽ ỽ : Middle Welsh
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with : tilde Ṿ ṿ Ʋ ʋ ᶌ
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IPA-specific symbols related to :
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: Modifier letter small with hook is used in phonetic transcription
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: Modifier letter small with right hook is a superscript IPA letter
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Ʌ ʌ ᶺ: Turned v
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ⱴ : with curl
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Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to :
Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets
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𐤅: Semitic letter Waw, from which the following symbols originally derive:
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Υ υ : Greek alphabet letter Upsilon, from which derives
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Y y : Latin letter , which, like , also derives from Upsilon (but was taken into the alphabet at a later date)
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Ѵ ѵ : Cyrillic letter izhitsa, also descended from Upsilon
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У у : Cyrillic letter , also descended from Upsilon via the digraph of omicron and upsilon
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Ү ү : Cyrillic letter , descended from and izhitsa, is used in the scripts for languages in the former Soviet Union and currently the Russia, as well as in Mongolian. Most commonly, it represents or .
Ligatures and abbreviations
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℣ : Versicle sign
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Ꝟ ꝟ : Forms of were used for medieval scribal abbreviations
Other representations
Unicode
Other
Notes
External links
