Семит әліпбиінің "вау" әрпінің тарихы мен қолданысы

Sixth letter of many Semitic alphabets

Waw ( "hook") is the sixth letter of the Semitic abjads, including
Phoenician wāw 𐤅,
Aramaic waw 𐡅,
Hebrew vav ו,
Syriac waw ܘ
and Arabic wāw و (sixth in abjadi order; 27th in modern Arabic order). It represents the consonant in classical Hebrew, and in modern Hebrew, as well as the vowels and In text with niqqud, a dot is added to the left or on top of the letter to indicate, respectively, the two vowel pronunciations. It's the origin of Greek Ϝ (digamma) and Υ (upsilon), Cyrillic У, Latin F and V and later Y, and the derived Latin or Roman alphabet letters U and W.

The Arabic letter و is named واو wāw and is written in several ways depending on its position in the word: The word also appears, particularly in classical verse, in the construction known as wāw rubba, to introduce a description. Kazakh and Kyrgyz. in Kurdish, Beja, and Kashmiri; in Arabic based Kazakh; in Uyghur. Also used in Balochi for and .

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
In modern Israeli Hebrew, some loanwords, the pronunciation of whose source contains , and their derivations, are pronounced with : ואחד – (but: [[Wadi – ). Modern Hebrew has no standardized way to distinguish orthographically between and The pronunciation is determined by prior knowledge or must be derived through context. Some non standard spellings of the sound are sometimes found in modern Hebrew texts, such as word initial double vav: וואללה – (word medial double vav is both standard and common for both and , see table above) or, rarely, vav with a geresh: ו׳יליאם – .

Vav can also be used as a mater lectionis for , 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 , "a market", (the "וּ" denotes a shuruk) as opposed to שִׁוֵּק , "to market" (the "וּ" denotes a vav with dagesh and is additionally pointed with a zeire, " ֵ ", denoting ). In the word שִׁוּוּק , "marketing", the first ("וּ") denotes a vav with dagesh, the second a shuruk, being the vowel attributed to the first. When a vav with a dot in the middle comes at the start of a word without a vowel attributed to it, it is a vav conjunctive (see below) that comes before ב, ו, מ, פ, or a letter with a ְ (Shva), and it does the ⟨ʔu⟩ sound.

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.)