2926: F-V-W: Not So Clear Dec 25, 2024

Looking through old documents, lots of letters one would expect to be used are swapped entirely. Often these spelling choices would be on display with multiple variants in the same document (see more here). Aside from the far more prominent use of the letter <y> in the middle of words, there were not clear distinctions about the dividing lines between <f>,<v> and <w> which both acted as the [w] sound like it is today, or [v]. This is not only a matter of spelling choices, but settling on which sounds were used at all. In Modern German the spelling <w> represent the sound [v], but s <f> and <v> are less clear. Usually <f> is [f] and <v> represents  the voiced approximant [ʋ] but depending on the context each can represent [v] also*. 

This variability and interchangeability is common, especially in Germanic languages, particularly before standardized spelling. Most English words with these letters—especially those that settled on spelling with <v>—can be found in Middle English and Early Modern English with each of those spelling choices. For instance, you will find ‘venom’ as ‘venim’, ‘wenim’, ‘fenim’, with the <o> becoming standard later.

*In certain contexts [f] sounds in some dialects acts as a lenis, unvoiced /v̥/ after particular vowels.