V

'V' is the twenty-second letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is pronounced ''vee'' .

Contents

The letter

Other names

Codes for computing

See also

The letter

The letter V ultimately comes from the Semitic letter ''Waw'', as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details.
In Greek, the letter "''upsilon''" (Υ) was adapted from ''waw'' to represent, at first, the vowel as in "moon" and then later , a rounded vowel similar to the German ü).
In Latin, it was borrowed in early times as V (without the stem) to represent the same sound, as well as the consonantal (historically, Latin came from Proto-Indo-European ). Thus, ''num'' was pronounced "noom" and ''via'' was pronounced "wee-a." From the first century A.D. on, depending on Vulgar Latin dialect, consonantal developed into , then later to .
In Roman numerals, the letter V is used to represent the number 5. It was used because it resembled the convention of counting by notches carved in wood, with every fifth notch double-cut to form a "V".
During the late Middle Ages, two forms of "v" developed, which were both used for modern ''u'' and ''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 ''valor'' and ''excuse'' appeared as in modern printing, "have" and "upon" were printed ''haue'' and ''vpon''. Eventually, in the 1700s, to differentiate between the consonant and vowel sounds, the "v" form was used to represent the consonant, and "u" the vowel sound, giving us the modern letter "u". Capital "U" appeared at this time; previously, V was used in all cases. Initially, once the letters 'u' and 'v' were established as separate letters, 'v' preceded 'u' in the alphabet; in modern times, this order has been reversed.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, represents the voiced labiodental fricative. See IPA chart for English for pronunciation key.
Similarly to J, K, W and Y, V is not used very frequently in the Basic English Language.

Other names

★ French: vé

★ Italian: vu

★ Spanish: uve (recommended) / ve (traditional)
In Japan, V is often called "bui" (ブイ). This name is an approximation of the English name which substitutes the voiced bilabial plosive for the voiced labiodental fricative (which doesn't exist in native Japanese phonology) and differentiates it from "bī" (ビー), the Japanese name of the letter B. It is now possible to write V in Japanese, thanks to the recent development of new Katakana characters. （ヴァ　ヴィ　ヴ　ヴェ　ヴォ）These new characters represent: Va, Vi, Vu, Ve, Vo.

Codes for computing

The ASCII code for capital V is 86 and for lowercase v is 118; or in binary 01010110 and 01110110, respectively.
The EBCDIC code for capital V is 229 and for lowercase v is 165.
The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "V" and "v" for upper and lower case respectively.

See also

★ Lowercase V should not be confused with the lowercase greek letter Nu (upper: Ν, lower: ν)
For other meanings and uses of the letter "V", see V (disambiguation). See also:

★ Vee

★ U

★ W