This article is about the letter of the Latin alphabet. For the lowercase letter of the Greek alphabet, see Nu (letter). For other uses, see V (disambiguation).
V, or v, is the twenty-second letter of 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]
Name
Catalan: ve (pronounced[ˈve]); in dialects that lack contrast between /v/ and /b/, the letter is called ve baixa[ˈbeˈbajʃə], "low B/V".
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/.
Spanish: uve[ˈuβe] is recommended, but ve[ˈbe] is traditional. If ⟨v⟩ is referred to as the latter, it would have the same pronunciation as the letter ⟨b⟩ in Spanish (i.e. [ˈbe] after pause or nasal sound, otherwise [ˈβe]);[2] thus further terms are needed to distinguish ve from be. In some countries it is called ve corta, ve baja, ve pequeña, ve chicaorvelabiodental.
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 (Ancient 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 ⟨v⟩ and ⟨u⟩ 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.[3] The rounded variant became the modern-day version of ⟨u⟩, and the letter's former pointed form became ⟨v⟩.
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.
A word-final /v/ sound (except in of) is normally spelled -⟨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 /ʌ/ 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⟩, ⟨w⟩, ⟨x⟩ and ⟨z⟩, ⟨v⟩ is not used very frequently in English. It is the sixth least frequently used letter in the English language, occurring in roughly 1% of words. ⟨v⟩ is the only letter that cannot be used to form an English two-letter word in the British[4] and Australian[5] versions of the game of Scrabble. It is one of only two letters (the other being ⟨c⟩) that cannot be used this way in the American version.[6][7]⟨v⟩ is also the only letter in the English language that is never silent.[8]
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, is 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/.
^"V", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "vee", op. cit.
^Díez Losada, Fernando (2004). La tribuna del idioma (in Spanish). Editorial Tecnologica de CR. p. 176. ISBN978-9977-66-161-2.
^Everson, Michael; Baker, Peter; Emiliano, António; Grammel, Florian; Haugen, Odd Einar; Luft, Diana; Pedro, Susana; Schumacher, Gerd; Stötzner, Andreas (January 30, 2006). "L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS"(PDF). Archived(PDF) from the original on September 19, 2018. Retrieved March 24, 2018.
Media related to V at Wikimedia Commons
The dictionary definition of V at Wiktionary
