В, the letter ve

History

В, named ve, is a letter of the Cyrillic script and the third letter of the modern Russian alphabet. It commonly represents the voiced labiodental fricative /v/, the sound of v in vase, and it can also represent /ʋ/. Ve is commonly romanized by the Latin letter V, as described by ISO 9, but the Latin letter W is sometimes used instead, as in Polish or in the German Duden transcription.

The capital letter Ve looks the same as the capital Latin letter B, but it is pronounced differently. A capital shaped like a Latin B in a Russian document carries the v sound of vase, and it is romanized as V under ISO 9. Nothing in the shape of the letter signals that value, which is why the resemblance is worth registering before working through a page of unfamiliar names.

A handwritten Russian document will almost always be in Russian cursive, the handwritten form of the modern Russian Cyrillic script, used in place of the block letters seen in printed material. Most handwritten Russian, especially in personal letters and schoolwork, uses it, and in Russian schools most children are taught to write in this script from first grade.

Russian cursive was developed during the 18th century on the base of skoropis, the earlier Cyrillic rapid or running script, which was in turn the 14th to 17th century chancery hand descended from the older Cyrillic bookhands called ustav and poluustav; it became the handwritten counterpart of the so-called civil, or Petrine, printed script of books. In skoropis itself each scribe had his own handwriting and his own peculiarities of letter forms, and shapes vary depending on their neighbourhood, so unclear places must be compared with parts of the same text already read.