Waw (letter) in the context of "Close-mid back rounded vowel"

A mater lectionis (/ˌmeɪtər ˌlɛktiˈoʊnɪs/ MAY-tər LEK-tee-OH-niss, /ˌmɑːtər -/ MAH-tər -⁠; Latin for 'mother of reading', pl. matres lectionis /ˌmɑːtreɪs -/ MAH-trayss -⁠; original Hebrew: אֵם קְרִיאָה, romanized: ʾēm qərîʾāh) is any consonant letter that is used to indicate a vowel, primarily in the writing of Semitic languages such as Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac. The letters that do this in Hebrew are aleph א, he ה, vav ו and yud י, with the latter two in particular being more often vowels than they are consonants. In Arabic, the matres lectionis (though they are much less often referred to thus) are ʾalif ا, wāw و and yāʾ ي.

The original value of the matres lectionis corresponds closely to what are called in modern linguistics glides or semivowels.

Judaism has different names given to God, which are considered sacred: יהוה (YHWH), אֲדֹנָי (Adonai transl. my Lord[s]), אֵל (El transl. God), אֱלֹהִים (Elohim transl. Gods/Godhead), שַׁדַּי (Shaddai transl. Almighty), and צְבָאוֹת (Tzevaot transl. [Lord of] Hosts); some also include I Am that I Am. Early authorities considered other Hebrew names mere epithets or descriptions of God, and wrote that they and names in other languages may be written and erased freely. Some moderns advise special care even in these cases, and many Orthodox Jews have adopted the chumras of writing "G-d" instead of "God" in English or saying Ṭēt-Vav (טו, lit. '9-6') instead of Yōd-Hē (יה, '10-5', but also 'Jah') for the number fifteen or Ṭēt-Zayin (טז, '9-7') instead of Yōd-Vav (יו, '10-6') for the Hebrew number sixteen.

The Tetragrammaton is the four-letter Hebrew-language theonym יהוה‎ (transliterated as YHWH), the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four Hebrew letters, written and read from right to left, are yod, he, vav, and he. The name may be derived from a verb that means 'to be', 'to exist', 'to cause to become', or 'to come to pass'.

While there is no consensus about the structure and etymology of the name, the form Yahweh (with niqqud: יַהוֶה) is now almost universally accepted among Biblical and Semitic linguistics scholars, though the vocalization Jehovah continues to have wide usage, especially in Christian traditions. In modernity, Christianity is the only Abrahamic religion in which the Tetragrammaton is freely and openly pronounced.

Upsilon (US: /ˈʌpsɪlɒn, ˈ(j)uːp-, -lən/, UK: /(j)uːpˈsaɪlən, ˈʊpsɪlɒn/ ; uppercase Υ, lowercase υ; Greek: ύψιλον ýpsilon [ˈipsilon]) or ypsilon /ɪp-/ is the twentieth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, Υʹ has a value of 400. It is derived from the Phoenician waw .

Digamma or wau (uppercase: Ϝ, lowercase: ϝ, numeral: ϛ) is an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet. It originally stood for the sound /w/ but it has remained in use principally as a Greek numeral for 6. Whereas it was originally called waw or wau, its most common appellation in classical Greek is digamma; as a numeral, it was called episēmon during the Byzantine era and is now known as stigma after the Byzantine ligature combining σ-τ as ϛ.

Digamma or wau was part of the original archaic Greek alphabet as initially adopted from Phoenician. Like its model, Phoenician waw, it represented the voiced labial-velar approximant /w/ and stood in the 6th position in the alphabet between epsilon and zeta. It is the consonantal doublet of the vowel letter upsilon (/u/), which was also derived from waw but was placed near the end of the Greek alphabet. Digamma or wau is in turn the ancestor of the Latin letter F. As an alphabetic letter, it is attested in archaic and dialectal ancient Greek inscriptions until the classical period.

Hebrew spelling is the way words are spelled in the Hebrew language. The Hebrew alphabet contains 22 letters, all of which are primarily consonants. This is because the Hebrew script is an abjad, that is, its letters indicate consonants, not vowels or syllables. An early system to overcome this, still used today, is matres lectionis, where four of these letters, alef, he, vav and yud also serve as vowel letters. Later, a system of vowel points to indicate vowels (Hebrew diacritics), called niqqud, was developed.