English

In English, ⟨v⟩ represents a voiced labiodental fricative.

Special rules of orthography normally apply to the letter ⟨v⟩:

• Traditionally, ⟨v⟩ is not doubled to indicate a short vowel, the way, for example, ⟨p⟩ 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 -⟨ve⟩, 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 /ʌ/ sound is spelled ⟨o⟩, not ⟨u⟩, before the letter ⟨v⟩. This originated with a mediaeval scribal practice designed to increase legibility by avoiding too many vertical strokes (minims) in a row.

Like ⟨j⟩, ⟨k⟩, ⟨w⟩, ⟨x⟩, and ⟨z⟩, ⟨v⟩ 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. ⟨v⟩ is the only letter that cannot be used to form an English two-letter word in the British^[4] and Australian^[5] versions of the game of Scrabble. It is one of only two letters (the other being ⟨c⟩) that cannot be used this way in the American version.^[6][7] ⟨v⟩ is also the only letter in the English language that is never silent.^[8]

Romance languages

The letter represents /v/ in several Romance languages, but in others it represents the same sound as ⟨b⟩, 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, ⟨v⟩ represents [b], [v], [β] or [w], depending on the position in the word and the sentence.

Other languages

In most languages which use the Latin alphabet, ⟨v⟩ represents a voiced bilabial or labiodental sound.

In contemporary German, it represents /v/ in most loan-words, 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, ⟨v⟩ represents a nasalized schwa, /ə̃/.

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

Other systems

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨v⟩ represents the voiced labiodental fricative.

Descendants and related letters in the Latin alphabet

• U u : Latin letter ⟨u⟩, originally the same letter as ⟨v⟩
• W w : Latin letter ⟨w⟩, descended from ⟨u⟩
• Ỽ ỽ : Middle Welsh ⟨v⟩
• ⟨v⟩ with diacritics: Ṽ ṽ Ṿ ṿ Ʋ ʋ ᶌ^[9]
• IPA-specific symbols related to ⟨v⟩: ⱱ ʋ
• ᶹ : Modifier letter small ⟨v⟩ with hook is used in phonetic transcription^[9]
• 𐞰 : Modifier letter small ⟨v⟩ with right hook is a superscript IPA letter^[10]
• Ʌ ʌ ᶺ: Turned ⟨v⟩
• ⱴ : ⟨v⟩ with curl
• Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to ⟨v⟩:^[11]
  • U+1D20 ᴠ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL V
  • U+1D5B ᵛ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL V
  • U+1D65 ᵥ LATIN SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER V
  • U+2C7D ⱽ MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL V^[12]

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

• 𐤅: Semitic letter Waw, from which the following symbols originally derive
  • Υ υ : Greek letter Upsilon, from which ⟨v⟩ derives
    • Y y : Latin letter ⟨y⟩, which, like ⟨v⟩, 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 ⟨u⟩, also descended from Upsilon via the digraph of omicron and upsilon
      • Ү ү : Cyrillic letter ⟨Ү⟩, descended from ⟨У⟩ and izhitsa and 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^[13]
• Ꝟ ꝟ : Forms of ⟨v⟩ were used for medieval scribal abbreviations^[14]

Computing

¹ Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

Other