V

V (minuscule: v) is the twenty-second letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is vee (pronounced /viː/), plural vees.^[1]

Name

• Catalan: ve ˈve; in dialects that merge /v/ and /b/, the letter is called ve baixa ˈbe ˈbaʃə (lit. 'low B').
• Czech: vé ˈvɛː
• French: vé ˈve
• German: Vau ˈfaʊ
• Italian: vi ˈvi or vu ˈvu
• Japanese: is called a variety of names that approximate its English name, most commonly ブイ bɯi or bui; still, less nativized variants, violating to an extent Japanese phonotactics, such as 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/.
• Polish: fał ˈfaw; ⟨v⟩ is not used in native vocabulary, where the /v/ sound is instead represented by ⟨w⟩.
• Portuguese: vê ˈve
• Spanish: uve ˈuβe is recommended by the RAE,^[2] but ve ˈbe is traditional. If is referred to using the latter, it would have the same pronunciation as the letter (that is, ˈbe in pausa or after a nasal consonant and ˈβe elsewhere).^[3] Thus, further terms are needed to distinguish ve from be, and to that end, ⟨v⟩ has been called ve corta, ve baja, ve pequeña, ve chica and ve labiodental,^[a] among others.

History

The letter ultimately comes from the Phoenician letter waw by way of .

During the Late Middle Ages, two minuscule glyphs of U developed which were both used for sounds including /u/ and modern /v/. The pointed form was written at the beginning of a word, while a rounded form was used in the middle or end, regardless of sound. So whereas valour and excuse appeared as in modern printing, have and upon were printed as "haue" and "vpon". The first distinction between the letters and is recorded in a Gothic script from 1386, where preceded . By the mid-16th century, the form was used to represent the consonant and the vowel sound, giving us the modern letter . and were not accepted as distinct letters until many years later.^[4] The rounded variant became the modern-day version of , and the letter's former pointed form became .

Use in writing systems

English

In English, represents a voiced labiodental fricative.

Special rules of orthography normally apply to the letter :

• Traditionally, is not doubled to indicate a short vowel, the way, for example, is doubled to indicate the difference between super and supper. However, that is changing with newly coined words, such as savvy, divvy up and skivvies.
• A word-final /v/ sound (except in of) is normally spelled -, regardless of the pronunciation of the vowel before it. This rule does not apply to transliterations of Slavic and Hebrew words, such as Kyiv (Kiev), or to words that started out as abbreviations, such as sov for sovereign.
• The /V/ sound is spelled , not , before the letter . This originated with a mediaeval scribal practice designed to increase legibility by avoiding too many vertical strokes (minims) in a row.

Like , , , and , is not used very frequently in English. It is the sixth least frequently used letter in the English language, occurring in roughly 1% of words. is the only letter that cannot be used to form an English two-letter word in the British^[5] and Australian^[6] versions of the game of Scrabble. It is one of only two letters (the other being ) that cannot be used this way in the American version.^[7][8] is also the only letter in the English language that is never silent.^[9]

Romance languages

The letter represents v in several Romance languages, but in others it represents the same sound as , i.e. b, due to a process known as betacism. Betacism occurs in most dialects of Spanish, in some dialects of Catalan and Portuguese, as well as in Aragonese, Asturleonese and Galician.

In Spanish, the phoneme has two main allophones; in most environments, it is pronounced β̞, but after a pause or a nasal it is typically b. See Allophones of /b d g/ in Spanish phonology for a more thorough discussion.

In Corsican, represents b, v, β or w, depending on the position in the word and the sentence.

Other languages

In most languages that use the Latin alphabet, represents a voiced bilabial or labiodental sound.

In contemporary German, it represents v in most loanwords, while in native German words, it always represents f.

In standard Dutch, it traditionally represents v, but in many regions, it represents f in some or all positions.

In the Latinization of the Cherokee syllabary, represents a nasalized schwa, ə̃.

In Chinese pinyin, while v is not used, the letter is used by most input methods to enter the letter , which most keyboards lack (romanized-input Chinese is a popular method to enter Chinese text). Informal romanizations of Mandarin Chinese use as a substitute for the close front rounded vowel /y/, properly written in both pinyin and Wade–Giles.

Other systems

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, represents the voiced labiodental fricative.

Other uses

• V is used to represent the Roman numeral 5.
• V is the symbol for vanadium. It is number 23 on the periodic table. Emerald derives its green coloring from either vanadium or chromium.
• v, v., and vs can also be used as an abbreviation for the word versus when between two or more competing items (e.g. Brown v. Board of Education).

Related characters

Descendants and related letters in the Latin alphabet

• U u : Latin letter , originally the same letter as
• W w : Latin letter , descended from
• Ỽ ỽ : Middle Welsh
• with diacritics: Ṽ ṽ Ṿ ṿ Ʋ ʋ ᶌ^[10]
• IPA-specific symbols related to : ⱱ ʋ
• : Modifier letter small with hook is used in phonetic transcription^[10]
• : Modifier letter small with right hook is a superscript IPA letter^[11]
• Ʌ ʌ ᶺ: Turned
• ⱴ : with curl
• Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to :^[12]
  • ^[13]

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

• 𐤅: Semitic letter Waw, from which the following symbols originally derive:
  • Υ υ : Greek letter Upsilon, from which derives
    • Y y : Latin letter , which, like , also derives from Upsilon (but was taken into the alphabet at a later date)
    • Ѵ ѵ : Cyrillic letter izhitsa, also descended from Upsilon
    • У у : Cyrillic letter , also descended from Upsilon via the digraph of omicron and upsilon
      • Ү ү : Cyrillic letter , descended from and izhitsa, is used in the scripts for languages in the former Soviet Union and currently the Russian Federation, as well as in Mongolian. Most commonly, it represents /y/ or /ʏ/.

Ligatures and abbreviations

• ℣ : Versicle sign^[14]
• Ꝟ ꝟ : with diagonal stroke, used for medieval scribal abbreviations^[15]

Notes

1. ^ lit. 'short B', 'low B', 'small B', 'small B', 'labiodental B', respectively

References

1. ^ "V", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "vee", op. cit.
2. ^ "v" (in Spanish). Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. 2 ed. Real Academia Española. January 19, 2024. Archived 3 May 2025 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 10 August 2025.
3. ^ Díez Losada, Fernando (2004). La tribuna del idioma (in Spanish). Editorial Tecnologica de CR. p. 176. ISBN 978-9977-66-161-2.
4. ^ Pflughaupt, Laurent (2008). Letter by Letter: An Alphabetical Miscellany. Princeton Architectural Press. pp. 123–124. ISBN 978-1-56898-737-8. Archived 2013-05-10 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
5. ^ Collins Scrabble Dictionary Revised 6th edition (2022) Harper Collins ISBN 978 00085 2391 6
6. ^ "2-Letter Words with Definitions". Australian Scrabble Players Association (ASPA). 8 May 2007. Archived 5 March 2013 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 20 February 2013.
7. ^ Hasbro staff (2014). "Scrabble word lists:2-Letter Words". Hasbro. Archived from the original on 2014-04-07. Retrieved 11 March 2014.
8. ^ Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, 6th Edition (2018) Merriam Webster ISBN 978 08777 9422 6
9. ^ "Every Letter Is Silent, Sometimes". Archived 5 March 2023 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 5 March 2023.
10. ^ Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS". Archived 2017-10-11 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
11. ^ Miller, Kirk & Ashby, Michael (2020-11-08). "L2/20-252R: Unicode request for IPA modifier-letters (a), pulmonic". Archived 2021-07-30 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
12. ^ Everson, Michael et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS". Archived 2018-02-19 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
13. ^ Ruppel, Klaas; Rueter, Jack; Kolehmainen, Erkki I. (2006-04-07). "L2/06-215: Proposal for Encoding 3 Additional Characters of the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet". Archived 2017-07-06 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
14. ^ "Roman Liturgy Fonts containing the response and versicle characters – Roman Liturgy". Roman Liturgy. 7 September 2011. Archived 2016-07-23 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2016-06-24.
15. ^ Everson, Michael; Baker, Peter; Emiliano, António; Grammel, Florian; Haugen, Odd Einar; Luft, Diana; Pedro, Susana; Schumacher, Gerd; Stötzner, Andreas (2006-01-30). "L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS". Archived 2018-09-19 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2018-03-24.