Waw (wāw "hook") is the sixthletter of theSemitic abjads, includingPhoenicianwāw 𐤅,Aramaicwaw 𐡅,Hebrewvavו‎,Syriacwaw ܘ andArabicwāwو‎ (sixth inabjadi order; 27th in modern Arabic order). It is also related to theAncient North Arabian 𐪅‎‎‎,South Arabian𐩥, andGe'ezወ.

It represents the consonant[w] in classicalHebrew, and[v] in modern Hebrew, as well as the vowels[u] and[o]. In text withniqqud, 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 GreekϜ (digamma) andΥ (upsilon); LatinF,V and later the derivedY,U andW; and the also derived CyrillicУ andѴ.

In Hebrew, the wordוָוvav is used to mean both "hook" and the letter's name^[1] (the name is also writtenוי״ו), while in Syriac and Arabic,waw to mean "hook" has fallen out of use.

TheArabic letterو is namedواوwāw and is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:^{[2]: I §1}

Wāw is used to represent four distinct phonetic features:^{[2]: I §§1–8}

• A consonant, pronounced as avoiced labial-velar approximant/w/, which is the case whenever it is at the beginning of a word, and sometimes elsewhere.
• Along/uː/. 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.
• Along/oː/ in manydialects, as a result of themonophthongization that the diphthong/aw/ underwent in most of words.
• Part of the sequence/aw/. In this case it has no diacritic, but could be marked with asukun in some traditions. The preceding consonant could either have no diacritic or have afatḥa sign, hinting to the first vowel/a/ in the diphthong.

As a vowel,wāw can serve as the carrier of ahamza:ؤ.

Wāw is the sole letter of the common Arabic wordwa, the primaryconjunction in Arabic, equivalent to "and". In writing, it isprefixed to the following word, sometimes including other conjunctions, such asوَلَكِنwa-lākin, meaning "but".^{[2]: I §365} 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 theQur'an in this way, and also in the generally fixed constructionواللهwallāh ("ByAllah!" or "I swear to God!").^{[2]: I §356d, II §62} The word also appears, particularly in classical verse, in the construction known aswāw rubba, to introduce a description.^{[2]: II §§84–85}

With an additional triple dot diacritic abovewaw, the letter then namedve is used to represent distinctively the consonant/w/ inArabic-basedUyghur,^[3]Kazakh andKyrgyz.^[4]

/o/ inKurdish,^[5][6]Beja,^[7] andKashmiri;^[8]/v/ inArabic-basedKazakh;^[9]/ø/ in Uyghur.^[3]
Thirty-fourth letter of the Azerbaijani Arabic script, represents ü/y/.

A variant of Kurdishûوو, ۇ/uː/; historically/o/ forSerbo-Croatian andUzbek.

Also used in Kyrgyz for Үү /y/.

/y/ in Uyghur.^[3] Also found inQuranic Arabic as inصلۈة‎ṣalāh "prayer" for anOld Higazi/oː/ merged with/aː/, in modern spellingصلاة‎.

/ʉː/ inSouthern Kurdish.^[5]

/u/ inUyghur.

InJawi script for/v/.^[10]Also used inBalochi for/ɯ/ and/oː/.^[11]

SeeArabic script in Unicode

Orthographic variants
Various print fonts			Cursive Hebrew	Rashi script
Serif	Sans-serif	Monospaced
ו	ו	ו

Hebrew spelling:וָו‎ orוָאו‎ orוָיו‎.

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

Vav has three orthographic variants, each with a differentphonemic value andphonetic 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 (ו‎) generally represents avoiced labiodental fricative (like the Englishv) inAshkenazi, EuropeanSephardi, Persian, Caucasian, Italian andmodern Israeli Hebrew, and was originally alabial-velar approximant/w/.

In modern Israeli Hebrew, someloanwords, the pronunciation of whose source contains/w/, and theirderivations, are pronounced with[w]:ואחד‎ –/ˈwaχad/ (but:ואדי‎ –/ˈvadi/).

Modern Hebrew has nostandardized way to distinguishorthographically between[v] and[w]. The pronunciation is determined by prior knowledge or must be derived through context.

Some nonstandard spellings of the sound[w] are sometimes found in modern Hebrew texts, such as word-initial double-vav:וואללה‎ –/ˈwala/ (word-medial double-vav is both standard and common for both/v/ and/w/, seetable above) or, rarely, vav with ageresh:ו׳יליאם‎ –/ˈwiljam/.

Vav can be used as amater lectionis for ano vowel, in which case it is known as aḥolam male, which in pointed text is marked as vav with a dot above it. It is pronounced[o̞] (phonemically transcribed more simply as/o/).

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 calledḥolam ḥaser. Some inadequate typefaces do not support the distinction between theḥolam male ⟨וֹ‎⟩/o/, the consonantal vav pointed with aḥolam ḥaser ⟨וֺ‎⟩/vo/ (compareḥolam male ⟨מַצּוֹת‎⟩/maˈtsot/ and consonantal vav-ḥolam ḥaser ⟨מִצְוֺת‎⟩/mitsˈvot/). To display a consonantal vav withḥolam ḥaser correctly, the typeface must either support the vav with the Unicode combining character "HEBREW POINT HOLAM HASER FOR VAV" (U+05BA, HTML Entity (decimal) ֺ)^[12] or the precomposed characterוֹ‎ (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 can also serve as amater lectionis for[u], in which case it is termedshuruk and, in text withniqqud, bears a mid-height dot to the left.

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

Unlike othermatres lectionis, shuruk can occur word-initially as an allomorph of thevav conjunctive (see below), namely in the context of a subsequent labial or a consonant followed byshva na'. Its pronunciation in this case is/ʔu/.

Vav ingematria represents the number six, and when used at the beginning ofHebrew years, it means 6000 (i.e.ותשנד innumbers would be thedate 6754.)

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 agrammatical conjunction meaning 'and'. It comes at the start of a word, and is written וּ beforeב, ו,מ,פ, or a letter with a ְ (Shva), ו with the following letter'sHataf's Niqqud before a letter with a Hataf (for example,וַ‎ beforeאֲנִי‎,וָ‎ beforeחֳדָשִׁים‎,וֶ‎ beforeאֱמֶת‎), וָ sometimes before astress andוְ‎ 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' andvayomar 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', andve'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

InYiddish,^[13] the letter (known asvov) is used for several orthographic purposes in native words:

• Alone, a single vovו represents the vowel[u] in Northern Yiddish (Litvish) or[i] in Southern Yiddish (Poylish and Galitzish).^{[citation needed]}
• Thedigraphוו, "tsvey vovn" ('two vovs'), represents the consonant[v].
• The digraphוי, consisting of a vov followed by ayud, represents the diphthong [oj] or [ɛɪ].^{[citation needed]}

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 wordvu 'where' is spelledוווּ, astsvey vovn followed by a single vov; the single vov indicating[u] 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 silentaleph.

Loanwords from Hebrew or Aramaic in Yiddish are spelled as they are in their language of origin.

Waw
Madnḫaya Waw
Esṭrangela Waw
Serṭo Waw

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 dotabove 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.

Wikimedia Commons has media related toWaw (letter).

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