From The Hebrew Alphabet...

The Hebrew Alphabet Letter Vav

The sixth letter of many Semitic alphabets is vav. In some of the other Semitic alphabets it is spelled waw ore vau. The letter vav has three orthographic variants; each variant has a different phonetic realization and a different phonemic value.

A mater lectionis can be used for certain Hebrew consonants that will sometimes act like a vowel. The letters that are able to do this are yud, alef, vav and he. The letters yud and vav are used more often as vowels than they are as consonants. The letter Vav can also be used for the ‘o’ vowel. In this case it is usually described as a holom male.

This ‘o’ vowel can also appear without vav, and only just the dot. In this case it is then known as holom haser.

The letter vav can also be used for an ‘oo’ vowel. In this particular case it is called a shuruk. In gematria, the letter vav represents the number six. When this letter comes at the sof Hebrew years, it means 6000.

When vav is used at the beginning of a word, it has several possible meanings:

- When the letter vav connects either two words or parts of a sentence, it is usually a grammatical conjunction that means ‘and’. This is how vav is most commonly used.
- Vav consecutive " it is mainly Biblical in nature, also is commonly mistaken for the first type of vav.

There are also other ways that vav may be used, but these are the most common.

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