Ʊ

The letter Ʊ (minuscule: ʊ), called horseshoe or sometimes bucket, is a letter of the International Phonetic Alphabet used to transcribe a near-close near-back rounded vowel. Graphically, the lower case is a turned small-capital Greek letter omega (Ω) in many typefaces (e.g. Arial, Calibri, Candara, Liberation, Lucida, Noto, Times New Roman), and historically it derives from a small-capital Latin U (ᴜ), with the serifs exaggerated to make them more visible.[1] However, Geoffrey Pullum interpreted it as an IPA variant of the Greek letter upsilon (υ) and called it Latin upsilon, the name that would be adopted by Unicode, though in IPA an actual Greek upsilon is also used, which Pullum apologetically called script V.[2]

Not to be confused with upsilon.

Shapes of horseshoe as designed for the African reference alphabet, clearly based on a serifed shape of the Latin capital U.

Horseshoe is used in the African reference alphabet, and national alphabets such as those of Anii[3] and Tem. It most often has the value of /u/ with retracted tongue root.

Use on computers

The majuscule and the minuscule are located at U+01B1 and U+028A in Unicode, respectively.

Derived characters are U+1DB7 ᶷ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL UPSILON and U+1D7F ᵿ LATIN SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH STROKE.[4]

See also

References
  1. Small-cap ⟨ᴜ⟩ was rounded to modern ⟨ʊ⟩ in 1904, but continued with its original shape in Americanist usage. Association phonétique internationale (1904). "Aim and Principles of the International Phonetic Association". Le Maître Phonétique. 19 (11). Supplement. JSTOR 44703664.
  2. Pullum, Geoffrey K.; Ladusaw, William A. (1996). Phonetic Symbol Guide (Second ed.). University of Chicago Press. p. 185. ISBN 0-226-68536-5.
  3. Alphabet des langues nationales béninoises (in French). Ministère de l’Alphabétisation et de la Promotion des langues nationales, Centre national de linguistique appliquée, Benin. 2008. OL 25931062M.
  4. Constable, Peter (19 April 2004). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF).
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