Waw (letter)

Waw (wāw, sometimes also spelled vau, or vav) is the sixth letter of the Northwest Semitic family of scripts, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic ("sixth" in abjadi order; it is 27th in modern Arabic order).

In most Semitic languages it represents the sound [w], and in some (such as Hebrew and Arabic) also the long vowel [uː], depending on context.

In Modern Hebrew, the consonantal pronunciation is [v] or [β], a pattern shared by certain non-Semitic languages using the Arabic alphabet such as Persian and Urdu.

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek digamma (Ϝ, whose name in Greek was probably Ϝαυ) and upsilon (Υ), and Etruscan V ( or ). The latter is the source of the Latin letter F.

Vav literally means hook/peg/spear.

Hebrew Waw

Hebrew spelling: וָו

Pronunciation in Modern Hebrew

Waw has three orthographic variants, each with a different phonemic value and phonetic realisation:^[1]

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, and modern Israeli Hebrew; and originally a labial-velar approximant /w/. It is still pronounced as a [w] by some Jews of Oriental (Arabic speaking) origin.

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

Modern Hebrew has no standardized way to distinguish orthographically between [v] and [w].^[1] The pronunciation is either 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, e.g. וואללה – /ˈwala/ (word-medial double-vav is both standard and common for both /w/ and /v/, see table above) or, rarely, vav with a geresh, e.g. 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 holam male, which in pointed text is marked as vav with a dot above it. It is pronounced [o̞] (phonemically transcribed more simply as /o/).

This vowel is sometimes also denoted without the vav, as just the dot placed above and to the left of the letter it points, and is called then holam haser. Some inadequate typefaces don't support the distinction between the holam male, "וֹ", /o/, and a consonantal vav pointed with a holam haser, "", /vo/ (compare holam male in "מַצּוֹת", /maˈtsot/, to consonantal vav with holam haser in "מִצְת" /mitsˈvot/). To correctly display a consonantal vav with holam haser, the typeface must either support the combined character "" (HTML Entity (decimal) ) or the Unicode Character 'HEBREW POINT HOLAM HASER FOR VAV' (U+05BA, HTML Entity (decimal) ֺ),^[2] e.g. "מִצְוֺת".

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 nikud, 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/), "marketting", 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 waw

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

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.

Arabic wāw

The letter و is named واو wāw (Egyptian Arabic pronunciation: [wɑːw]), and is written is several ways depending in its position in the word:

Wāw is used to represent three 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 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. In some dialects, the diphthong may be reduced to the long monophthong /oː/. It is also commonly used for the latter phoneme to transcribe names or loanwords.

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

Wāw serves several functions in the Modern Standard 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 ولكن wa-lakin, 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 wallah ("By Allah!" or "I swear to God!").

References