Avestan Xve: The Letter in the Avestan Alphabet

The sound is the velar fricative pronounced with the lips brought together, so that a w like rounding runs through the whole articulation. Transliteration writes it as the plain fricative with a small raised v beside it. Seven signs are given to the velar region, which is more than any neighbouring script of the period provided for the same part of the mouth. The series carries a plain stop and a plain fricative, voiced counterparts for both, and palatalised and rounded forms besides, so that a reciter is never left to infer which of them a word calls for. It stands twentieth in the alphabet as a whole and fourth of the thirty-eight consonants, between Avestan Xye and Avestan Ge. That position is not arbitrary. The sequence follows a scheme, vowels before consonants and consonants by place of articulation, and each letter's place in it is a statement about the sound.

Zoroastrian worship treats the correct sounding of the Avesta as part of the act itself. A priest is expected to produce the words as they have been received, and a sign that could stand for either of two sounds would put that in doubt. The size of this letter list follows from the requirement and not from any love of complication. Fifty-four letters is a large inventory by any standard and larger than any script in use around it. The number is less a measure of the language's complexity than of how much of the recitation the compilers decided the page ought to carry.