Ve (Cyrillic)

History

Both Ve and the Cyrillic letter Be (Б б) were derived from the Greek letter Beta (Β β), which already represented in Greek by the time the Cyrillic alphabet was created.

In the Early Cyrillic alphabet, its name was (vědě), meaning "I know". In the old Russian alphabet the name was vedi.

In the Cyrillic numeral system, it had the value of 2.

Form

The cursive, handwritten, and italic forms look rounded like the capital letter, or the Greek letter beta (). This form is also used in Bulgarian forms.

Usage

In Russian and Bulgarian, Ve generally represents , but at the end of a word or before voiceless consonants, it represents the voiceless . Before a palatalizing vowel or soft sign, it represents .

In standard Ukrainian pronunciation (based on the Poltava dialect), Ve usually represents [ʋ] in the word initial position (or preceding most vowels) and a sound like the English W () when in the word final position. Because of this, it is not uncommon to see words ending in transcribed to end in , for example, Владислав = Vladyslaw for Vladislav.

Additionally, some Ukrainians also use this pronunciation in words where the letter is directly preceded by a consonant, while for others all occurrences of the letter Ve denote . In Eastern Ukraine, the letter Ve may represent a voiceless , but this is considered a Russianism, as word-final devoicing does not occur in standard Ukrainian. For example, the standard Ukrainian pronunciation of the word сказав ([he] said) is . However, in Eastern Ukraine one is likely to hear the Russified (with final devoicing).

In Belarusian, the letter Ve represents only the sound . In the word final position, or if directly proceeded by a consonant, it mutates to the letter Short U (Ў ў), a Belarusian letter representing the sound . E.g., the Belarusian noun "language" is мова (mova), but the adjectival form is моўны (mowny), and the genitive plural of the noun (formed by removing the final ) is моў (mow).

In Rusyn, the letter Ve represents the sound /v/, or /w/ if it is at the end of the word.

In Serbian and Montenegrin, the letter Ve represents only the sound /v/.

In Macedonian the letter is used for the sound /v/, but if the letter appears at the end of the word then it is pronounced as /f/. An example of this is the word бев [bɛf] ('I was').

In Tuvan, it is used for /ʋ/.

In Mongolian, Kalmyk, and Dungan, it is used for /w/.

In Bashkir, /v/ in Russian loanwords and /w/ in Arabic and Persian loanwords.

Related letters and other similar characters

• Β β : Greek letter Beta
• Б б : Cyrillic letter Be
• Ѵ ѵ : Cyrillic Letter Izhitsa
• B b : Latin letter B
• V v : Latin letter V
• W w : Latin letter W
• Ԝ ԝ : Cyrillic Letter We

Code positions

Computing codes

|0412|name1=Cyrillic Capital Letter Ve |0432|name2=Cyrillic Small Letter Ve |1C80|name3=Cyrillic Small Letter Rounded Ve

References

References

1. (2000). "[[Duden]]". [[Bibliographisches Institut]].
2. (2013-05-07). "The Routledge Handbook of Scripts and Alphabets". Routledge.
3. (September 2003). "The Slavonic Languages". Routledge.