Waw (Arabic letter)

Waw in isolated form

connected shape
from the right:	ـو

Wāw ( Arabic واو) is the 27th letter of the Arabic alphabet . It is from the Phoenician Vav emerged and thus with the Latin F , V (and thus also U and W ) and Y used. Its counterpart in the Greek alphabet is no longer used Digamma and in the Hebrew alphabet, the Waw . The numerical value 6 is assigned to it.

Sound value and transcription

Waw with Hamza about it

The waw is one of the two semiconsonants in Arabic. Depending on the word, it stands for a consonant or serves to lengthen the vowel.

• As a consonant, the waw corresponds to the voiced labiovelar approximant , thus the English "w" sound in white or water . It is reproduced in the DMG inscription with a “w”;
• As a sign for the vowel elongation, Waw stands for the closed (= "long") U as in "Usedom", as an elongation of the short u ( damma ). It is then reproduced in the DMG inscription as “u” with a line above it (ū).

Furthermore, Waw can serve as a carrier vowel for the Hamza .

In the first name عمرو Amr the bastard is dumb. In the wordصلوة salah (prayer ritual), that tooصلاةcan be written, and a few more words it is spoken like Alif .

Waw in Unicode

Unicode codepoint	U + 0648
Unicode name	ARABIC LETTER WAW
HTML	& # 1608;
ISO 8859-6	0xe8