Waw (letter)
Waw | |
---|---|
Phoenician | waw |
Hebrew | ו |
Aramaic | waw |
Syriac | ܘ |
Arabic | و |
Phonemic representation | w, v, o, u |
Position in alphabet | 6 |
Numerical value | 6 |
Alphabetic derivatives of the Phoenician | |
Greek | Ϝ Υ |
Latin | F V U W Y |
Cyrillic | У |
Waw (wāw "hook") is the sixth letter of the Semitic abjads, including
Phoenician wāw ,
Aramaic waw
,
Hebrew vav (also vau) ו,
Syriac waw ܘ
and Arabic wāw و (sixth in abjadi order; 27th in modern Arabic order).
It represents the consonant [w] (in Modern Hebrew also [v]) and the vowels [u] and [o].
It is the origin of Greek Ϝ (digamma), Υ (upsilon) and Latin F, V and the derived letters U, W, Y.
Arabic wāw
The letter و is named واو wāw and is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:
Position in word | Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial |
---|---|---|---|---|
Glyph form: (Help) |
و | ـو | ـو | و |
Wāw is used to represent four distinct phonetic features:
- A consonant, pronounced as a voiced labial-velar approximant /w/, which is the case whenever it is at the beginnings of words, but normally occurs also in the middle or end.
- A long /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.
- A long /oː/ In many dialects, as a result of the monophthongization that underwent the diphthong /aw/ in most of the words.
- A part of a diphthong, /aw/. In this case it has no diacritic, but could be marked with a sukun in some traditions. The preceding consonant could either have no diacritic or have fatḥa sign, hinting to the first vowel /a/ in the diphthong.
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
Position in word | Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial |
---|---|---|---|---|
Glyph form: (Help) |
ۋ | ـۋ | ـۋ | ۋ |
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.
Position in word | Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial |
---|---|---|---|---|
Glyph form: (Help) |
ۆ | ـۆ | ـۆ | ۆ |
/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,[specify] for example "u" in bull (بۆل)
Position in word | Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial |
---|---|---|---|---|
Glyph form: (Help) |
ۉ | ـۉ | ـۉ | ۉ |
for /oː/ or /u/, used in a lot of languages,[specify] for example o in bold (بۉلد)
Position in word | Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial |
---|---|---|---|---|
Glyph form: (Help) |
ۈ | ـۈ | ـۈ | ۈ |
/y/ in Uyghur and also in other languages[specify] with a similar vowel.
Position in word | Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial |
---|---|---|---|---|
Glyph form: (Help) |
ۊ | ـۊ | ـۊ | ۊ |
/ʉː/ in Southern Kurdish.
Position in word | Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial |
---|---|---|---|---|
Glyph form: (Help) |
ۏ | ـۏ | ـۏ | ۏ |
In Jawi script: Used for /v/.
Other letters
Hebrew Waw
Orthographic variants | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Various print fonts | Cursive Hebrew |
Rashi script | ||
Serif | Sans-serif | Monospaced | ||
ו | ו | ו | ![]() |
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Hebrew spelling: וָו
Pronunciation in Modern Hebrew
Vav has three orthographic variants, each with a different phonemic value and phonetic realisation:[1]
Variant (with Niqqud) | Without Niqqud | Name | Phonemic value | Phonetic realisation | English example |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
as initial letter:Template:Hebrew |
Consonantal Vav (Hebrew: Vav Itsurit ו׳ עיצורית) |
/v/, /w/ | [v], [w] | vote wall | |
as middle letter:Template:Hebrew | |||||
as final letter:Template:Hebrew or Template:Hebrew | |||||
Vav Shruka ([väv ʃruˈkä] / ו׳ שרוקה) or Shuruq ([ʃuˈruk] / שׁוּרוּק) |
/u/ | [u] | glue | ||
Vav Chaluma ([väv χäluˈmä] / ו׳ חלומה) or Holam Male ([χo̞ˈläm maˈle̞] / חוֹלָם מָלֵא) |
/o/ | [o̞] | no, noh |
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].[1] 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 ⟨Template:Hebrew⟩ /vo/ (compare ḥolam male ⟨Template:Hebrew⟩ /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) ֺ)[2] or the precomposed character Template:Hebrew (U+FB4B).
- Compare between the three:
- The vav with the combining character HEBREW POINT HOLAM: מִצְוֹת
- The vav with the combining character HEBREW POINT HOLAM HASER FOR VAV: מִצְוֺת
- The precomposed character: Template:Hebrew
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 ("Template:Hebrew") 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. Template:Hebrew (/ʃuk/), "a market", (the "Template:Hebrew" denotes a shuruk) as opposed to Template:Hebrew (/ʃiˈvek/), "to market" (the "Template:Hebrew" denotes a vav with dagesh and is additionally pointed with a zeire, " Template:Hebrew ", denoting /e/). In the word Template:Hebrew (/ʃiˈvuk/), "marketing", the first ("Template:Hebrew") 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:
- Vav Conjunctive (Vav Hachibur, literally "the Vav of Connection"—chibur means "joining, or bringing together") is a vav connecting two words or parts of a sentence; it is a grammatical conjunction meaning 'and' , cognate to the Arabic. This is the most common usage.
- Vav Consecutive (Vav Hahipuch, literally "the Vav of Reversal"—hipuch means "inversion"), mainly biblical, 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' and vayomar 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', and ve'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.)
Syriac Waw
Waw |
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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.
Character encodings
Preview | ו | و | ܘ | ࠅ | וּ | וֹ | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | HEBREW LETTER VAV | ARABIC LETTER WAW | SYRIAC LETTER WAW | SAMARITAN LETTER BAA | HEBREW LETTER VAV WITH DAGESH | HEBREW LETTER VAV WITH HOLAM | ||||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 1493 | U+05D5 | 1608 | U+0648 | 1816 | U+0718 | 2053 | U+0805 | 64309 | U+FB35 | 64331 | U+FB4B |
UTF-8 | 215 149 | D7 95 | 217 136 | D9 88 | 220 152 | DC 98 | 224 160 133 | E0 A0 85 | 239 172 181 | EF AC B5 | 239 173 139 | EF AD 8B |
Numeric character reference | ו |
ו |
و |
و |
ܘ |
ܘ |
ࠅ |
ࠅ |
וּ |
וּ |
וֹ |
וֹ |
Preview | 𐎆 | 𐡅 | 𐤅 | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | UGARITIC LETTER WO | IMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER WAW | PHOENICIAN LETTER WAU | |||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 66438 | U+10386 | 67653 | U+10845 | 67845 | U+10905 |
UTF-8 | 240 144 142 134 | F0 90 8E 86 | 240 144 161 133 | F0 90 A1 85 | 240 144 164 133 | F0 90 A4 85 |
UTF-16 | 55296 57222 | D800 DF86 | 55298 56389 | D802 DC45 | 55298 56581 | D802 DD05 |
Numeric character reference | 𐎆 |
𐎆 |
𐡅 |
𐡅 |
𐤅 |
𐤅 |
References
- ^ a b "Announcements of the Academy of the Hebrew Language" (PDF). Retrieved 2013-04-11.
- ^ "List of fonts that support U+05BA at". Fileformat.info. Retrieved 2013-04-11.
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)