Irish, the letter is mostly used in loanwords, such as veidhlín from English violin. However the sound appears naturally in Irish when /b/ (or /m/) is lenited or "softened", represented in the orthography by (or "mh"), so that bhí is pronounced , an bhean (the woman) is pronounced , etc. For more information, see Irish phonology. This letter is not used in the Polish alphabet, where is spelled with the letter instead, following the convention of German. Other systems In the 19th century, was sometimes used to transcribe a palatal click, , a function since partly taken over by . Related characters Descendants and related letters in the Latin alphabet U u : Latin letter U, originally the same letter as V W w : Latin letter W, descended from U Ỽ ỽ : Middle Welsh V V with diacritics: Ṽ ṽ Ṿ ṿ Ʋ ʋ ᶌ IPA-specific symbols related to V: ᶹ : Modifier letter small v with hook is used in phonetic transcription 𐞰 : Modifier letter small v with right hook is a superscript IPA letter Ʌ ʌ ᶺ: Turned v ⱴ : V with curl Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to V: Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets 𐤅: Semitic letter Waw, from which the following symbols originally derive Υ υ : Greek letter Upsilon, from which V derives Y y : Latin letter Y, which, like V, also derives from Upsilon (but was taken into the alphabet at a later date) Ѵ ѵ : Cyrillic letter izhitsa, also descended from Upsilon У у : Cyrillic letter u, also descended from Upsilon via the digraph of omicron and upsilon Ү ү : Cyrillic letter Ү, descended from У and izhitsa and used in the scripts for languages in the former Soviet Union and currently the Russian Federation, as well as in Mongolian. Most commonly it represents /y/ or /ʏ/. Ligatures and abbreviations ℣ : Versicle sign Ꝟ ꝟ : Forms of V were used for medieval scribal abbreviations Computing codes 1 Other representations V is the symbol for vanadium. It is number 23 on the periodic table. Emerald derives its green coloring from either vanadium or chromium. v, v., and vs can also be used as an abbreviation for the word versus when between two or more competing items (Ex: Brown v. Board of Education). See also V to mean the number 5, in Roman numerals