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Waw/Vav ( "hook") is the sixth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ''wāw'' ,
Aramaic The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated i ...
''waw'' ,
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
'' waw/vav'' , Syriac ''waw'' ܘ and
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
''
wāw Waw/Vav ( "hook") is the sixth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ''wāw'' , Aramaic ''waw'' , Hebrew '' waw/vav'' , Syriac ''waw'' ܘ and Arabic '' wāw'' (sixth in abjadi order; 27th in modern Arabic order). It repres ...
'' (sixth in abjadi order; 27th in modern Arabic order). It represents the consonant in classical
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
, and in modern Hebrew, as well as the vowels and . In text with
niqqud In Hebrew orthography, niqqud or nikud ( or ) is a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Several such diacritical systems were developed in ...
, 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), Cyrillic У, Latin F and U and later Y, and the derived Latin- or Roman-alphabet letters V, and W.


Origin

The letter likely originated with an Egyptian hieroglyph which represented the word ''mace'' (transliterated as ḥ(dj)): T3 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 usage.


Arabic wāw

The
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
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 Long may refer to: Measurement * Long, characteristic of something of great duration * Long, characteristic of something of great length * Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate * Longa (music), note value in early music mensu ...
. 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 Long may refer to: Measurement * Long, characteristic of something of great duration * Long, characteristic of something of great length * Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate * Longa (music), note value in early music mensu ...
In many dialects, as a result of the monophthongization that the diphthong underwent in most of words. *A part of a
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
, . 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 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
prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy''. Particul ...
ed to the following word, sometimes including other conjunctions, such as ''wa-lākin'', meaning "but". Another function is the "
oath Traditionally an oath (from Anglo-Saxon ', also called plight) is either a statement of fact or a promise taken by a sacrality as a sign of verity. A common legal substitute for those who conscientiously object to making sacred oaths is to g ...
", 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 The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , si ...
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 ''Wāw rubba'' ( ar, وَاوُ رُبَّ) is a usage of the Arabic word ''wa'' ( ar, وَ). Whereas the usual use of ''wa'' is as a conjunction (meaning 'and'), the ''wāw rubba'' is used, particularly in poetry, in an exclamatory fashion to intr ...
'', 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. in Kurdish and Beja; in Arabic-based Kazakh; in Uyghur.
Thirty-fourth letter of the Azerbaijani Arabic script, represents Ô .
It is also used for short vowel or in a lot of languages, for example "u" in ''bull'' () for or , used in a lot of languages specifically Turkic ones, for example o in ''bold'' () in Uyghur and also in other languages with a similar vowel. in Southern Kurdish. In
Jawi script Jawi (; ace, Jawoë; Kelantan-Pattani: ''Yawi''; ) is a writing system used for writing several languages of Southeast Asia, such as Acehnese, Banjarese, Kerinci, Maguindanaon, Malay, Minangkabau, Tausūg, and Ternate. Jawi is bas ...
: Used for . Also used in Balochi for .


Other letters

See
Arabic script in Unicode Many scripts in Unicode, such as Arabic, have special orthographic rules that require certain combinations of letterforms to be combined into special ligature forms. In English, the common ampersand (&) developed from a ligature in which the han ...


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 Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
realisation: In modern Hebrew, the frequency of the usage of vav, out of all the letters, is about 10.00%.


Vav as consonant

Consonantal vav () generally represents a
voiced labiodental fricative The voiced labiodental fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is v. The sound is similar to ...
(like the English v) in
Ashkenazi Ashkenazi Jews ( ; he, יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכְּנַז, translit=Yehudei Ashkenaz, ; yi, אַשכּנזישע ייִדן, Ashkenazishe Yidn), also known as Ashkenazic Jews or ''Ashkenazim'',, Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation: , singu ...
, European
Sephardi Sephardic (or Sephardi) Jews (, ; lad, Djudíos Sefardíes), also ''Sepharadim'' , Modern Hebrew: ''Sfaradim'', Tiberian: Səp̄āraddîm, also , ''Ye'hude Sepharad'', lit. "The Jews of Spain", es, Judíos sefardíes (or ), pt, Judeus sefa ...
, Persian, Caucasian, Italian and
modern Israeli Hebrew Modern Hebrew ( he, עברית חדשה, ''ʿivrít ḥadašá ', , '' lit.'' "Modern Hebrew" or "New Hebrew"), also known as Israeli Hebrew or Israeli, and generally referred to by speakers simply as Hebrew ( ), is the standard form of the He ...
, and was originally a labial-velar approximant . In modern Israeli Hebrew, some
loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because ...
s, 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 ''Matres lectionis'' (from Latin "mothers of reading", singular form: ''mater lectionis'', from he, אֵם קְרִיאָה ) are consonants that are used to indicate a vowel, primarily in the writing down of Semitic languages such as Arabic, ...
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 In Hebrew orthography, niqqud or nikud ( or ) is a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Several such diacritical systems were developed in ...
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.


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 In grammar, a conjunction ( abbreviated or ) is a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses that are called the conjuncts of the conjunctions. That definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech and so what constitu ...
meaning '' 'and' ''. 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 vov) is used for several orthographic purposes in native words: * Alone, a single vov represents the vowel in standard Yiddish. * The digraph , "''tsvey vovn''" ('two vovs'), represents the consonant . * The digraph , consisting of a vov followed by a yud, represents the diphthong []. 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 ''vu'' 'where' is spelled , as ''tsvey vovn'' 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.
Loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because ...
s 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 Vowel letters