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Waw (, also spelled '''vav''' or '''vau''') is the sixth letter of many Semitic Alphabets , including Phoenician , Aramaic , Hebrew , Syriac , and Arabic (in Abjadi Order ; it is 27th in modern Arabic order). It expressed a labial Approximant , IPA or .

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Digamma (, whose name in Greek was probably ) and Upsilon (), Etruscan ''v'' (, ) and Latin F , V , and Y ; V later developed into U and W .

Waw is derived from a Hieroglyph depicting a hook.


WAW IN HEBREW:


Pronunciation:

This letter has three forms of pronunciation: the letter vav as a consonant, pronounced like the English (as in f''oo''l); and the letter with the dot on top is pronounced like the English O (''Oh!'').


Variation on written form/pronunciation:

There are three orthographic variants of Vav, which alter the pronunciation:

  • ו: /v/

  • וּ: /u/

  • וֹ: /o/



Vav as consonant:

Vav without any dots is pronounced as a Voiced Labiodental Fricative (like the English V ) or as a Voiced Labiodental Approximant (like the Dutch or German word-initial W ) in Ashkenazi , European Sephardi and Modern Israeli Hebrew ; pronounced as a Labial-velar Approximant (like a W ) by most Jews of Eastern origin.


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 ''holom male'', and in pointed text is marked with a dot above and to the left and is usually pronounced as a Close-mid Back Rounded Vowel like the English ''Oh!''.
This vowel can also appear without the vav, as just the dot, and is known then as ''holom haser''. (The vav may still take a ''holom haser'' and thus appear identical to this vowel although the consonant is pronounced, thus producing the sound ''vo'' as in mitz''vo''t .)


Vav with a dot in the middle:

Vav can also be used as a mater lectionis for an 'oo' vowel, in which case it is known as a ''shuruk'', and in pointed text is marked with a dot in the middle (on the left side) and is usually pronounced as a Near-close Near-back Rounded Vowel like the English b''oo''k.


Significance of Vav in Hebrew

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.)

Vav at the beginning of the word has several possible meanings:
  • ''Vav Conjunctive'', when a vav connects two words or parts of a sentence; it is a Grammatical Conjunction meaning '' 'and' ''. This is the most common usage.


  • ''Vav Consecutive'' - 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 future tense, it changes the verb to the past tense. For example, ''yomar'' means 'he will say' and ''vayomar'' means 'he said';

  • ---when placed in front of a verb in the past tense, it changes the verb to the future tense. For example, ''ahavtah'' means 'you loved', and ''ve'ahavtah'' means 'you will love'.


In modern Hebrew, Vav has been responsible for the difficult task of transliterating the English letter W . The debate has been whether to use one vav, two vavs, or a vav with a chupchik. All three can be seen in use; for example the name Washington can be transliterated as ושינגטון, ו'שינגטון, or וושינגטון.

A ''vav'' transliterating English W is often pronounced exactly as English /w/, despite the fact that this consonant sound is not used otherwise in the modern Hebrew.


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