Waw ( "hook") is the sixth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician wÃÂw ð¤ , Aramaic waw ð¡ , Hebrew vav , Syriac waw àand Arabic wÃÂw (sixth in abjadi order; 27th in modern Arabic order). It is also related to the Ancient North Arabian ðª âÂÂâÂÂâÂÂ, South Arabian , and Ge'ez .
It represents the consonant in classical Hebrew, and in modern Hebrew, as well as the vowels and . 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 à(digamma) and ÃÂ¥ (upsilon); Latin F, V and later the derived Y, U and W; and the also derived Cyrillic ã and ô.
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.
The Arabic letter is named wÃÂw and is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:
WÃÂw is used to represent four distinct phonetic features:
As a vowel, wÃÂw can serve as the carrier of a hamza: .
WÃÂw 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-lÃÂkin, meaning "but". 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 wallÃÂh ("By Allah!" or "I swear to God!"). The word also appears, particularly in classical verse, in the construction known as wÃÂw rubba, to introduce a description.
With an additional triple dot diacritic above waw, the letter then named ve is used to represent distinctively the consonant in Arabic-based Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz.
in Kurdish, Beja, and Kashmiri; in Arabic-based Kazakh; in Uyghur.<br /> Thirty-fourth letter of the Azerbaijani Arabic script, represents ü .
A variant of Kurdish û ; historically for Serbo-Croatian and Uzbek.
Also used in Kyrgyz for îï /y/.
in Uyghur. Also found in Quranic Arabic as in "prayer" for an Old Higazi merged with , in modern spelling .
in Southern Kurdish.
in Uyghur.
In Jawi script for . Also used in Balochi for and .
Hebrew spelling: <big></big> or <big></big> or <big></big>.
Vav has three orthographic variants, each with a different phonemic value and phonetic realisation:
In modern Hebrew, the frequency of the usage of vav, out of all the letters, is one of the highest, about 10.00%.
Consonantal vav () 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 , and their derivations, are pronounced with : â (but: â ).
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: â (word-medial double-vav is both standard and common for both and , see table above) or, rarely, vav with a geresh: â .
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 (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 ' â¨â© , the consonantal vav pointed with a ' â¨â© (compare ' â¨â© and consonantal vav-' â¨â© ). 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) &#1466;) or the precomposed character (U+FB4B).
Compare the three:
Vav can also serve as a mater lectionis for , 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 (""), but differ with respect to the absence or presence, respectively, of an additional vowel marker. Compare, for instance, "(a) market" with "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 "marketing": the first "" 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 .
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.)
Vav at the beginning of the word has several possible meanings:
(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.)
In Yiddish, the letter (known as ) is used for several orthographic purposes in native words:
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 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.
In the Syriac alphabet, the sixth letter is ÃÂ. Waw (ÃÂÃÂÃÂ) 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.