Ve (Cyrillic)
. It looks exactly like a capital
Latin letter
B but is pronounced differently.
This letter and
б are derived from Greek
Beta (', β), which was, evidently, already pronounced in Greek by the time the Cyrillic alphabet was created. The old name for
в was
Vedi and it had numerical value of
two. It looks like the capital letter
B of the
Latin alphabet.In
Russian, its pronunciation 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),
B is pronounced like an English
W () when in the word final position.
e.g.
'ладислав (
Vladyslaw)
Additionaly some Ukrainians also use such pronunciation when the letter is directly proceeded by a consonant, while others pronounce all occurences of the letter
B as . In Eastern
Ukraine, the letter
B may be devoiced to , but this is considered a
Russification, as word final devoicing does not occur in standard Ukrainainian.
e.g. standard Ukrainian pronunciation of the word
сказав ('he said') is
skazaw. However in Eastern Ukraine one is likely to hear the Russified
skazaf (with final devoicing).
In the
Belarussian language, the letter
B only represents the sound . In the word final position, or if directly proceeded by a consonant it mutates to the letter
Ў, a unique Belarussian letter representing the sound .
e.g. the Belarussian noun 'language' is
мова (
mova), but the adjectival form is
моўный (
mownyy), and the genitive plural of the noun (formed by removing the final
a) is
моў (
mow).
Its
HTML entities are:
В or
В for capital and
в or
в for small letter.
*
Be*
Beta,
*
B*
V
