Waw ("hook") is the sixth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician wāw, Aramaic waw,Hebrew vav, Syriac waw ܘ and Arabic wāw (sixth in abjadi order; 27th in modern Arabic order).
It represents the consonant pronounced as /link/ in classical Hebrew, and pronounced as /link/ in modern Hebrew, as well as the vowels pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/. 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 Ϝ (digamma) and Υ (upsilon), Cyrillic У, Latin F and V and later Y, and the derived Latin- or Roman-alphabet letters U and W.
The letter likely originated with an Egyptian hieroglyph which represented the word mace (transliterated as ḥḏ, hedj):[1]
In Modern Hebrew, the word Hebrew: {{linktext|וָו vav is used to mean both "hook" and the letter's name (the name is also written Hebrew: {{linktext|וי״ו), while in Syriac and Arabic, waw to mean "hook" has fallen out of use.
| wāw | |
| Letter: | و |
| Script: | Arabic script |
| Type: | Abjad |
| Language: | Arabic language |
| Phonemes: | pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ |
| Alphanumber: | 27 |
| Direction: | Right-to-left |
The Arabic letter Arabic: و is named Arabic: واو wāw and is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:
Wāw is used to represent four distinct phonetic features:
As a vowel, wāw can serve as the carrier of a hamza: Arabic: ؤ. The isolated form of waw (و) is believed to be the origins of the numeral 9.
Wāw 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 Arabic: وَلَكِن wa-lākin, 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 Arabic: والله wallāh ("By Allah!" or "I swear to God!").[2] The word also appears, particularly in classical verse, in the construction known as wāw 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 pronounced as /link/ in Arabic-based Uyghur,[3] Kazakh and Kyrgyz.[4]
pronounced as /link/ in Kurdish,[5] [6] Beja,[7] and Kashmiri;[8] pronounced as /link/ in Arabic-based Kazakh;[9] pronounced as /link/ in Uyghur.
Thirty-fourth letter of the Azerbaijani Arabic script, represents ü pronounced as /link/.
A variant of Kurdish û وو, ۇ pronounced as /link/; historically for Serbo-Croatian pronounced as /link/.
Also used in Kyrgyz for Үү /y/.
pronounced as /link/ in Uyghur. Also found in Quranic Arabic as in "prayer" for an Old Higazi pronounced as /link/ merged with pronounced as /link/, in modern spelling .
pronounced as /link/ in Southern Kurdish.
In Jawi script for pronounced as /link/.[10] Also used in Balochi for pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/.[11]
See Arabic script in Unicode
Hebrew spelling: or or .
Vav has three orthographic variants, each with a different phonemic value and phonetic realisation:
| Variant (with Niqqud) | Without Niqqud | Name | Phonemic value | Phonetic realisation | English example | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| as initial letter: | Consonantal Vav (Hebrew: Vav Itsurit) | /v/, /w/ | pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ | vote wall | ||
| as middle letter: | ||||||
| as final letter: or | ||||||
| Vav Shruka (pronounced as /[väv ʃruˈkä]/ /) or Shuruq (pronounced as /[ʃuˈruk]/ /) | /u/ | pronounced as /link/ | glue | |||
| Vav Chaluma (pronounced as /[väv χäluˈmä]/ /) or Holam Male (pronounced as /[χo̞ˈläm maˈle̞]/ /) | /o/ | pronounced as /link/ | no, noh |
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 pronounced as //w//.
In modern Israeli Hebrew, some loanwords, the pronunciation of whose source contains pronounced as /link/, and their derivations, are pronounced with pronounced as /link/: – pronounced as //ˈwaχad// (but: – pronounced as //ˈvadi//).
Modern Hebrew has no standardized way to distinguish orthographically between pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/. The pronunciation is determined by prior knowledge or must be derived through context.
Some non standard spellings of the sound pronounced as /link/ are sometimes found in modern Hebrew texts, such as word-initial double-vav: – pronounced as //ˈwala// (word-medial double-vav is both standard and common for both pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/, see table above) or, rarely, vav with a geresh: – pronounced as //ˈwiljam//.
See main article: Holam. 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 pronounced as /link/ (phonemically transcribed more simply as pronounced 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 called . Some inadequate typefaces do not support the distinction between the ⟨⟩ pronounced as //o//, the consonantal vav pointed with a ⟨⟩ pronounced as //vo// (compare ⟨⟩ pronounced as //maˈtsot// and consonantal vav- ⟨⟩ pronounced as //mitsˈvot//). 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) ֺ)[12] or the precomposed character (U+FB4B).
Compare the three:
See main article: Shuruk. Vav can also be used as a mater lectionis for pronounced as /link/, in which case it is known as a shuruk, and in text with niqqud 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. (pronounced as //ʃuk//), "a market", (the "" denotes a shuruk) as opposed to (pronounced as //ʃiˈvek//), "to market" (the "" denotes a vav with dagesh and is additionally pointed with a zeire, "
", denoting pronounced as //e//). In the word (pronounced as //ʃiˈvuk//), "marketing", the first ("") denotes a vav with dagesh, the second a shuruk, being the vowel attributed to the first.When a vav with a dot in the middle comes at the start of a word without a vowel attributed to it, it is a vav conjunctive (see below) that comes before ב, ו, מ, פ, or a letter with a ְ (Shva), and it does the ⟨ʔu⟩ sound.
Vav in gematria represents the number six, and when used at the beginning of Hebrew years, it means 6000 (i.e. Hebrew: ותשנד 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,[13] the letter (known as Yiddish: vov) 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 Yiddish: vu 'where' is spelled Yiddish: וווּ, as Yiddish: tsvey vovn followed by a single vov; the single vov indicating pronounced as /link/ 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 ܘ. Waw (ܘܐܘ) 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.