verb to the imperfect tense. For example, ahavtah means 'you loved', and ve'ahavtah means 'you will love'. (Note: Older Hebrew did not have "tense" in a temporal sense, "perfect," and "imperfect" instead denoting aspect of completed or continuing action. Modern Hebrew verbal tenses have developed closer to their Indo-European counterparts, mostly having a temporal quality rather than denoting aspect. As a rule, Modern Hebrew does not use the "Vav Consecutive" form.) vav explicative Yiddish In Yiddish, the letter (known as vov) is used for several orthographic purposes in native words: Alone, a single vov represents the vowel in standard Yiddish. The digraph , "tsvey vovn" ('two vovs'), represents the consonant . The digraph , consisting of a vov followed by a yud, represents the diphthong []. The single vov may be written with a dot on the left when necessary to avoid ambiguity and distinguish it from other functions of the letter. For example, the word vu 'where' is spelled , as tsvey vovn followed by a single vov; the single vov indicating is marked with a dot in order to distinguish which of the three vovs represents the vowel. Some texts instead separate the digraph from the single vov with a silent aleph. Loanwords from Hebrew or Aramaic in Yiddish are spelled as they are in their language of origin. Syriac Waw In the Syriac alphabet, the sixth letter is ܘ. Waw (ܘܐܘ) is pronounced [w]. When it is used as a mater lectionis, a waw with a dot above the letter is pronounced [o], and a waw with a dot under the letter is pronounced [u]. Waw has an alphabetic-numeral value of 6. Character encodings References External links Phoenician alphabet Arabic letters Hebrew letters Vowel letters