(Redirected from В)
'Ve' (В, в) is the third letter of the
Cyrillic alphabet, representing the sound . It is shaped exactly like a capital
Latin letter
B but is pronounced differently.
This letter and
б are derived from Greek
Beta (Β, β), which, evidently, already represented in Greek by the time the Cyrillic alphabet was created. The old name for в was ''Vedi'' and it had numerical value of two in the old system of
Cyrillic numerals. It looks like the capital letter ''B'' of the
Latin alphabet.
In
Russian, its phonemic representation is similar to English except word-finally (when it is represents a voiceless ) and before a
palatalizing vowel when it represents .
In standard
Ukrainian pronunciation (based on the
Poltava dialect), в represents a sound like an English ''W'' () when in the word final position. Because of this, it is not uncommon to see transliterations of words ending in в, end in "w".
e.g. Владислав (''Vladyslaw'')
Additionally, some Ukrainians also use such pronunciation in words where the letter is directly proceeded by a consonant, while for others all occurrences of the letter в denote . In Eastern
Ukraine, the letter в may represent a devoiced , but this is considered a
Russification, as word final devoicing does not occur in standard Ukrainian.
e.g. 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 the
Belarusian language, the letter в only represents the sound . In the word final position, or if directly proceeded by a consonant it mutates to the letter
Ў, a unique Belarusian letter representing the sound .
e.g. the Belarusian noun 'language' is мова (''mova''), but the adjectival form is моўный (''mownyy''), and the genitive plural of the noun (formed by removing the final а) is моў (''mow'').
Code positions
Its
HTML entities are:
В or
В for capital and
в or
в for small letter.
See also
★
Be
★
Beta,
★
B
★
V