F is the sixth letter of the alphabet used for the modern English language. It is also used in a number of other languages, including French, German, and Spanish. The sound of the letter F occurs in such words as free, soft, half, coffee, and off. The word of is the only instance in English in which F is pronounced like V.
Scholars believe the letter F evolved from an Egyptian hieroglyph (pictorial symbol) that represented a mace, a club with a heavy head. By around 1500 B.C., hieroglyphs had been adapted into an alphabet—the earliest known alphabet—known as Proto-Sinaitic. By 1100 B.C., an alphabet for the Phoenician language had evolved from Proto-Sinaitic. See Semitic languages.
The Phoenician letter that can be traced to the Egyptian mace hieroglyph is the sixth letter of the Phoenician alphabet, waw. The Phoenicians used the letter to represent the beginning W sound of waw, their word for peg.
Around 800 B.C., when the Greeks adapted the Phoenician alphabet, the letter waw evolved into two new letters, digamma and upsilon. Digamma resembled a modern capital F, and the ancient Greeks used it for the W sound. By around 400 B.C., digamma had dropped out of the alphabet used for classical Greek texts. But by then, digamma had passed to the Etruscans, who adopted the Greek alphabet around 700 B.C. The Etruscan language had an F sound. The Etruscans represented this sound by different letters over time—using, for example, their letters for W and H. The Etruscan letter for W, adapted from digamma, looked somewhat like a capital F. When the Romans adapted Etruscan letters, they simplified the letter to F.
See also Alphabet; Greek language.
