F

F or f (pronounced: [ʔɛf]) is the sixth letter of the classical and modern Latin alphabet. It is a consonant. In German, the f has the sound value [f]. This sound is a voiceless labiodental fricative. The letter F has an average frequency of 1.66% in German-language texts. It is thus the 18th most frequent letter in German texts.

The finger alphabet for the deaf or hard of hearing represents the letter F with the thumb and index finger forming a closed circle and the remaining three fingers pointing up in parallel.

Nothing is known about the phonetic value and meaning of the letter in the Proto-Sinaitic script, the corresponding symbol represents a hook or a club with a rounded tip. In the Phoenician alphabet, the letter lost its tip and looked like a rounded Y. The letter received the name Waw and was used to represent the phonetic value [w].

In the early Greek alphabet, the letter was adopted twice: First, as a digamma to denote the consonant [w], and second, as a ypsilon that initially denoted the vowel [u]. By Classical Ancient Greek, however, the digamma had become useless, since the anlautende [w] was no longer pronounced before vowels. The letter was removed from the Greek alphabet, but still lived on as a sign for the number 6.

The Etruscans adopted the early Greek digamma and also its phonetic value. The Etruscan language also knew the sound [f], this sound did not exist in ancient Greek (the phi originally stood for [pʰ], only later did it become [f]). The Etruscans used the digamma in combination with the character H to represent this sound. When written from right to left, the letter combination looks like this: . Later, the Etruscans introduced a separate letter for the sound [f], namely: . The origin of this letter is unclear.

When the Romans adopted the alphabet from the Etruscans, however, they used not the letter , but the first part of the combination to represent the sound [f].