V
V, or v, is the twenty-second and fifth-to-last letter in the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Its name in English is vee (pronounced /ˈviː/), plural vees.[1]
The letter V comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y.[2] See F for details.
In Greek, the letter upsilon "Υ" was adapted from waw to represent, at first, the vowel [u]. This was later fronted to [y], the front rounded vowel.
In Latin, a stemless variant shape of the upsilon was borrowed in early times as V — either directly from the Western Greek alphabet or from the Etruscan alphabet as an intermediary — to represent the same /u/ sound, as well as the consonantal /w/, num — originally spelled NVM — was pronounced /num/ and via was pronounced [ˈwia]. From the 1st century AD on, depending on Vulgar Latin dialect, consonantal /w/ developed into /β/ (kept in Spanish), then later to /v/.
During the Late Middle Ages, two minuscule glyphs developed which were both used for sounds including /u/ and modern /v/. The pointed form "v" was written at the beginning of a word, while a rounded form "u" 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 "u" and "v" is recorded in a Gothic script from 1386, where "v" preceded "u". By the mid-16th century, the "v" form was used to represent the consonant and "u" the vowel sound,giving us the modern letter "u". Capital and majuscule "U" was not accepted as a distinct letter until many years later.[3]
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, /v/ represents the voiced labiodental fricative. See Help:IPA.
