Waw (letter)

Arabic wāw

The letter و is named 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: ؤ.

Wāw serves several functions in Arabic. Perhaps foremost among them is that it is the primary conjunction in Arabic, equivalent to "and"; it is usually prefixed to other conjunctions, such as وَلَكِن wa-lākin, meaning "but". Another function is the "oath", by preceding a noun of great significantly valued by 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 والله wallāh ("By Allah!" or "I swear to God!").

Derived letters

With an additional triple dot diacritic above waw, the letter then named ve is used to represent distinctively the consonant /v/ sometimes in Arabic-based Sorani Kurdish and in Arabic-based Uyghur.

/o/ in Sorani Kurdish; /v/ in Arabic-based Kazakh; /ø/ in Uyghur.
Thirty-fourth letter of the Azerbaijani Arabic script, represents Ô /ɔ/.
It is also used for short vowel /o/ or /u/ in a lot of languages, for example "u" in bull (بۆل)

for /oː/ or /u/, used in a lot of languages, for example o in bold (بۉلد)

/y/ in Uyghur and also in other languages with a similar vowel.

/ʉː/ in Southern Kurdish.

In Jawi script: Used for /v/.

Other letters

See Arabic script in Unicode

Hebrew Waw

Hebrew spelling: וָו‎

Pronunciation in Modern Hebrew

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 about 10.00%.

Vav as consonant

Consonantal vav (ו) 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 /w/. It is pronounced, like in Arabic, as a [w] by some Jews of Mizrahi origin.

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

Modern Hebrew has no standardized way to distinguish orthographically between [v] and [w]. The pronunciation is determined by prior knowledge or must be derived through context.

Some non standard 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/, see table above) or, rarely, vav with a geresh:ו׳יליאם – /ˈwiljam/.

Vav with a dot on top

Vav can be used as a mater lectionis for an o vowel, in which case it is known as a ḥolam 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. This vowel can be denoted without the vav, as just the dot placed above and to the left of the letter it points, and is called then ḥolam ḥaser. Some inadequate typefaces don't support the distinction between the ḥolam male ⟨וֹ‎⟩ /o/, the consonantal vav pointed with a ḥolam ḥaser ⟨וֺ‎⟩ /vo/ (compare ḥolam male ⟨מַצּוֹת‎⟩ /maˈtsot/ and consonantal vav-ḥolam ḥaser ⟨מִצְוֺת‎⟩ /mitsˈvot/). To correctly display a consonantal vav with ḥolam ḥaser, the typeface must either support the vav with the Unicode combining character "HEBREW POINT HOLAM HASER FOR VAV" (U+05BA, HTML Entity (decimal) ֺ) or the precomposed character וֹ‎ (U+FB4B).

Vav with a dot in the middle

Vav can also be used as a mater lectionis for [u], 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 ("וּ‎") 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. שׁוּק‎ (/ʃuk/), "a market", (the "וּ‎" denotes a shuruk) as opposed to שִׁוֵּק‎ (/ʃiˈvek/), "to market" (the "וּ‎" denotes a vav with dagesh and is additionally pointed with a zeire, " ֵ‎ ", denoting /e/). In the word שִׁוּוּק‎ (/ʃiˈvuk/), "marketing", the first ("וּ‎") denotes a vav with dagesh, the second a shuruk, being the vowel attributed to the first.

Numerical value

Vav in gematria represents the number six, and when used at the beginning of Hebrew years, it means 6000 (i.e. ותשנד in numbers would be the date 6754.)

Words written as vav

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 the Syriac alphabet, the sixth letter is ܘ — Waw ܘܐܘ, it is pronounced as a [w]. When used as a mater lectionis, a Waw with a dot above the letter is an [o] vowel, and a Waw with a dot under the letter is an [u] vowel. It's alphabetic-numeral is 6.