Waw (letter)

Template:Template other Waw ( "hook") is the sixth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician wāw 𐤅, Aramaic waw 𐡅, Hebrew vav ו‎, Syriac waw ܘ and Arabic wāw Template:Script/Arabic (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 Template:IPAblink in classical Hebrew, and Template:IPAblink in modern Hebrew, as well as the vowels Template:IPAblink and Template:IPAblink. 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

In 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:Template:Rp

Position in word:	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic

Wāw is used to represent four distinct phonetic features:Template:Rp

• 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: .

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".Template:Rp 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!").Template:Rp The word also appears, particularly in classical verse, in the construction known as wāw rubba, to introduce a description.Template:Rp

Derived letters

Position in word:	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic

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

Position in word:	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic

Template:IPAslink in Kurdish, Beja, and Kashmiri; Template:IPAslink in Arabic-based Kazakh; Template:IPAslink in Uyghur.
Thirty-fourth letter of the Azerbaijani Arabic script, represents ü Template:IPAslink.

Position in word:	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic

A variant of Kurdish û Template:IPAslink; historically Template:IPAslink for Serbo-Croatian and Uzbek.

Also used in Kyrgyz for Үү /y/.

Position in word:	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic

Template:IPAslink in Uyghur. Also found in Quranic Arabic as in Template:Script/Arabic "prayer" for an Old Higazi Template:IPAslink merged with Template:IPAslink, in modern spelling Template:Script/Arabic.

Position in word:	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic

Template:IPAslink in Southern Kurdish.

Position in word:	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic

Template:IPAslink in Uyghur.

Position in word:	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic	Template:Script/Arabic

In Jawi script for Template:IPAslink. Also used in Balochi for Template:IPAslink and Template:IPAslink.

Other letters

See Arabic script in Unicode

Hebrew waw/vav

Orthographic variants
Various print fonts			Cursive Hebrew	Rashi script
Serif	Sans-serif	Monospaced
ו	ו	ו	File:Hebrew letter Vav handwriting.svg	File:Vav (Rashi-script - Hebrew letter).svg

Hebrew spelling: וָו‎ or וָאו‎ or וָיו‎.

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:

Variant (with Niqqud)	Without Niqqud	Name	Phonemic value	Phonetic realisation	English example
ו‎	as initial letter:ו‎	Consonantal Vav (Hebrew: Vav Itsurit ו׳ עיצורית‎)	/v/, /w/	Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink	vote wall
	as middle letter:וו‎
	as final letter:ו‎ or יו‎
וּ‎	ו‎	Vav Shruka ( / ו׳ שרוקה‎) or Shuruq ( / שׁוּרוּק‎)	/u/	Template:IPAblink	glue
וֹ‎	ו‎	Vav Chaluma ( / ו׳ חלומה‎) or Holam Male ( / חוֹלָם מָלֵא‎)	/o/	Template:IPAblink	no, noh

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 (ו‎) 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 Template:IPAslink, and their derivations, are pronounced with Template:IPAblink: ואחד‎ – (but: ואדי‎ – ).

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

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

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 Template:IPAblink (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 ⟨וֹ‎⟩ , the consonantal vav pointed with a ⟨וֺ‎⟩ (compare ⟨מַצּוֹת‎⟩ and consonantal vav- ⟨מִצְוֺת‎⟩ ). 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 וֹ‎ (U+FB4B).

Compare the three:

1. The vav with the combining character HEBREW POINT HOLAM: מִצְוֹת‎
2. The vav with the combining character HEBREW POINT HOLAM HASER FOR VAV: מִצְוֺת‎
3. The precomposed character: מִצְוֹת‎

Vav with a dot in the middle

Vav can also serve as a mater lectionis for Template:IPAblink, in which case it is termed shuruk and, in text with niqqud, bears a mid-height dot to the left.

Shuruk and vav with a dagesh look identical ("וּ‎"), but differ with respect to the absence or presence, respectively, of an additional vowel marker. Compare, for instance, שׁוּק‎ "(a) market" with שִׁוֵּק‎ "to market": in the latter, a zeire (denoting /e/) follows the pointed vav, forcing its interpretation as a geminate consonant. Both cases occur side by side in the word שִׁוּוּק‎ "marketing": the first "וּ‎" is a consonantal vav with a dagesh, followed by the vowel /u/ in the visually identical form of shuruk.

Unlike other matres lectionis, shuruk can occur word-initially as an allomorph of the vav conjunctive (see below), namely in the context of a subsequent labial or a consonant followed by shva na'. Its pronunciation in this case is .

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, וַ‎ before אֲנִי‎, וָ‎ before חֳדָשִׁים‎, וֶ‎ before אֱמֶת‎), וָ sometimes before a stress and וְ‎ 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 Template:IPAblink in Northern Yiddish (Litvish) or Template:IPAblink in Southern Yiddish (Poylish and Galitzish).
• The digraph , "" ('two vovs'), represents the consonant Template:IPAblink.
• 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 Template:IPAblink 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

Waw
File:Syriac Eastern waw.svg Madnḫaya Waw
File:Syriac Estrangela waw.svg Esṭrangela Waw
File:Syriac Serta waw.svg Serṭo Waw

File:Syriac letter shapes Waw.PNG

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