W is the twenty-third letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English ( ,

The sounds /w/ (spelled with U/V) and /b/ (spelled B) of Classical Latin developed into a bilabial fricative /β/ between vowels, in Early Medieval Latin. Therefore, V no longer represented adequately the labial-velar approximant sound /w/ of Old High German. In later German, this phoneme /w/ became /v/; this is why German W represents that sound. In Dutch, it became a labiodental approximant /ʋ/ (with the exception of words with EEUW, which have /eːβ/), or other diphthongs containing -uw. However, in many Dutch speaking areas, such as Flanders and Suriname the /β/ pronunciation is used at all times.

The ancient Phoenician letter shin had a W shape; the sounds and histories of the two letters, however, are entirely unrelated—shin represented /ʃ/ or /s/, and developed into the Latin alphabet S.

Usage

In Europe, there are only a few languages that use W in native words and all are located in a central-western European zone between Cornwall and Poland: English, German, Low German, Polish, Dutch, Frisian, Welsh, Cornish, Breton and Kashubian. English uses W to represent /w/, German and Polish use it for the voiced labiodental fricative /v/ (with Polish using Ł for /w/), and Dutch uses it for /w/ or /ʋ/. Unlike its use in other languages, the letter is used in Welsh to represent the vowel /u/ as well as the related approximant consonant /w/. English also contains a number of words beginning with a W that is silent in most dialects before a (pronounced) R, remaining from usage in Anglo-Saxon in which the W was pronounced: wreak, wrap, wreck, wrench, wroth, wrinkle, etc. (Certain dialects of Scottish English still distinguish this digraph.)

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, /w/ is used for the voiced labial-velar approximant, probably based on English.

In the Finnish alphabet, "W" is seen as a variant of "V" and not a separate letter. It is however recognised and maintained in the spelling of some old names, reflecting an earlier German spelling standard, and in some modern loan words. In all cases it is pronounced /v/. In the alphabets of most modern Romance languages (excepting far northern French and Walloon), W is little used, it can be found mostly in foreign names and words recently borrowed (le week-end, il watt, el kiwi). When a spelling for /w/ in a native word is needed, a spelling from the native alphabet, such as V, U, or OU, can be used instead. The same was true in the Danish alphabet and Swedish until 1980 and 2006, respectively, when the letter was officially acknowledged as an individual letter.

The equivalent representation of the /w/ sound in the Cyrillic alphabet is Ў, a letter unique to the Belarusian language. The Russians, however, use the Cyrillic character В, (/v/ the equivalent of V in the Latin alphabet), when transliterating "W".