This article is about the letter of the Latin alphabet. For the lowercase letter of the Greek alphabet, seeNu (letter). For other uses, seeV (disambiguation).
V, orv, is the twenty-secondletter of theLatin alphabet, used in themodern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English isvee (pronounced/ˈviː/ⓘ), pluralvees.[1]
Name
Catalan:ve (pronounced[ˈve]); in dialects that lack contrast between/v/ and/b/, the letter is calledve 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 thephonotactics 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, butve[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 distinguishve frombe. In some countries it is calledve corta,ve baja,ve pequeña,ve chica orvelabiodental.
The letter⟨v⟩ ultimately comes from thePhoenician letterwaw by way of⟨u⟩.
During theLate Middle Ages, twominuscule 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 whereasvalour andexcuse appeared as in modern printing,have andupon were printed as "haue" and "vpon". The first distinction between the letters⟨v⟩ and⟨u⟩ is recorded in aGothic 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 ashort vowel, the way, for example,⟨p⟩ is doubled to indicate the difference betweensuper andsupper. However, that is changing with newly coined words, such assavvy,divvy up andskivvies.
A word-final/v/ sound (except inof) 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 asKyiv (Kiev), or to words that started out as abbreviations, such assov forsovereign.
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 thesixth 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 ofScrabble. 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]
Ancient Corinthian vase depictingPerseus,Andromeda andKetos. The inscriptions denoting the depicted persons are written in an archaic form of theGreek alphabet.Perseus (classical ΠΕΡΣΕΥΣ) is inscribed as⟨ϺVBϺΡBΠ⟩ (from right to left), using⟨V⟩ to represent the vowel[u].San (⟨Ϻ⟩) is used instead ofSigma (⟨Σ⟩).
Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets
𐤅:Semitic letterWaw, from which the following symbols originally derive:
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 letterizhitsa, 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 formerSoviet Union and currently theRussian Federation, as well as inMongolian. Most commonly, it represents/y/ or/ʏ/.
^Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
References
^"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. RetrievedMarch 24, 2018.
