V (letter)

V, v is a letter of the Latin alphabet. It is the twenty-second letter of most variants, being placed after U and before W, as is the case for instance in the English alphabet. Its English name is pronounced [ˈviː], vee.

V is also the Roman numeral representing the number 5.

The phoneme /v/ occurs in many languages, but is absent in many others; many speakers may substitute some kind of [b] or [u]. For example, Japanese makes use of both: ウイルス uirusu 'virus' and ライブ raibu 'live'.

Use in English

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z
Use in English
Alphabetical word list
Retroalphabetical list
Common misspellings

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Phonetically, [v] is a labiodental fricative, partially or completely voiced, air passing between the lower lip and upper front teeth as they touch. It differs from [f] only in that the vocal folds vibrate, which does not occur for [f]: compare vîle and fîle (the accents show stress and pronunciation: see English phonemes). This is in contrast to [w], where both lips are used without touching each other or any teeth: whîle.

Examples: vúlgar, véry, vāst, háve, wâve and finally in spív, Slàv, dërv. [v] involves more friction as air passes through the mouth; for [w] the articulators organs are further apart, making the sound more vowel-like.

The letter v is rare at the end of a word, and it is most commonly found in that position pronounced [f] in Slavonic (i.e. Russian, Bulgarian, etc.) names: Rachmáninov, Prokófiev, Medvédev *Midvyédiff, Krùshchev (-chóff), Mólotov; it is also in Névsky (pronounced v) and Tchaikóvsky (usually [f]).

Being rare at the end, v hardly ever needs to be doubled, as it is in révved úp thê éngine (to avoid *rêved). v does not normally have to be doubled after a preceding short vowel (usually é): séven, cléver, héaven, éver, évery, séver, bévy, lòver, drível, cívil. But it doubles before final y to emphasise that the preceding vowel is short: chívvy, sávvy (compare chîves and nâvy). So flívver is unusual, and it rhymes with ríver.

The preceding vowel is long in: êven, fêver, hâver, fâvour, sâviour, ôver, clôver, drîver, dîver, wâver, hâven and Stêven (= the more regular spelling of Stêphen, which does not have an [f] sound).

v rarely ends words or occurs before consonants; it does, though, in the French word for Âpril, adopted as a girl's name, Ávril.

v is one of the three letters, the others being j and q, that are never silent.

See also

• Apostrophe
• Hyphen
• Spelling pronunciation
• Letter (alphabet)
• Alphabet
• Writing system
• Orthography
• Written language
• Writing