The letter V comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details. In Greek, the letter upsilon "Υ" was adapted from waw to represent, at first, the vowel as in "moon". This was later fronted to, the front rounded vowel spelled "ü" in German. In Latin, a stemless variant shape of the upsilon was borrowed in early times as V—either directly from the Western Greek alphabet or from the Etruscan alphabet as an intermediary—to represent the same sound, as well as the consonantal. Thus, num—originally spelled NVM—was pronounced and via was pronounced. From the 1st century AD on, depending on Vulgar Latin dialect, consonantal developed into , then later to. During the Late Middle Ages, two glyphs developed which were both used for sounds including and modern. 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 "u". Capital and majuscule "U" was not accepted as a distinct letter until many years later.
Letter
In the, represents the voiced labiodental fricative. See. In English, V is unusual in that it has not traditionally been 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 "divvy up" and "skivvies". 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 1.03% in words. V is the only letter that cannot be used to form an English two-letter word in the Australian version of the game of Scrabble. C also cannot be used in the American version. The letter appears frequently in the Romance languages, where it is the first letter of the second person plural pronoun and the stem of the imperfect form of most verbs.
Name in other languages
ve, pronounced ; in dialects that lack contrast between and, the letter is called ve baixa "low B/V".
vé
vé
Vau
vi or vu
fał
vê
uve is recommended, but ve is traditional. If V is pronounced in the second way, it would have the same pronunciation as the letter B in Spanish ; thus further terms are needed to distinguish ve from be. In some countries it is called ve corta, ve baja, ve pequeña, ve chica or ve labiodental.
In Japanese, V is often called "bui", possibly due to the difficulty of typing "vi" or even "vui", an approximation of the English name which substitutes the voiced bilabial plosive for the voiced labiodental fricative and differentiates it from "bī", the Japanese name of the letter B. Some words are more often spelled with the b equivalent character instead of vu due to the long-time use of the word without it.
Pronunciation and use
In most languages which use the Latin alphabet, 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, that is, or. In Corsican, it is pronounced,, or, depending on the position in the word and the sentence. In contemporary German, it is pronounced in most loan-words while in native German words, it is always pronounced. In standard Dutch it is traditionally pronounced as but in many regions it is pronounced as in some or all positions. In Native Americanlanguages of North America, represents a nasalized central vowel, /ə̃/. In ChinesePinyin, while is not used, the letter is used by most input methods to enter letter, which most keyboards lack. Informal romanizations of Mandarin Chinese use V as a substitute for the close front rounded vowel, properly written ü in pinyin and Wade-Giles. In Irish, the letter is mostly used in loanwords, such as veidhlín from English violin. However the sound appears naturally in Irish when /b/ is lenited or "softened", represented in the orthography by , so that bhí is pronounced, an bhean is pronounced, etc. For more information, see Irish phonology. This letter is not used in the Polish alphabet, where is spelled with the letter W| instead, following the convention of German. In German, the letter sounds like /f/.
Other systems
In the 19th century, was sometimes used to transcribe a palatal click,, a function since partly taken over by.
Related characters
Descendants and related letters in the Latin alphabet
U u : Latin letter U, originally the same letter as V
**Y y : Latin letter Y, which, like V, also derives from Upsilon
**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/.
Ꝟ ꝟ : Forms of V were used for medieval scribal abbreviations
Computing codes
Other representations
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 when between two or more competing items.
