U (Cyrillic)

U у; italics: У у) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It commonly represents the close back rounded vowel /u/, somewhat like the pronunciation of oo in "boot". The forms of the Cyrillic letter U are similar to the lowercase of the Latin letter Y (Y y; Y y), but like most other Cyrillic letters, the upper and lowercase forms are similar in shape and differ mainly in size and vertical placement.

Cyrillic letter U
Phonetic usage:[u],[ʊ]
Numeric value:400
The Cyrillic script
Slavic letters
АБВГҐДЂ
ЃЕЀЁЄЖЗ
З́ЅИЍЙІЇ
ЈКЛЉМНЊ
ОŌПРСС́Т
ЋЌУӮЎФХ
ЦЧЏШЩЪЫ
ЬЭЮЯ
Non-Slavic letters
А́А̀ӐА̄А̊А̃Ӓ
Ӓ̄ӔӘӘ́Ә̃ӚВ̌
ҒГ̧Г̑Г̄Г̣Г̌Ҕ
ӺҒ̌ӶԀԂ
Д̆Д̣ԪԬД̆Ӗ
Е̄Е̃Ё̄Є̈ӁҖӜ
ԄҘӞЗ̌З̱З̣Ԑ
Ԑ̈ӠԆӢИ̃ҊӤ
И́ҚӃҠҞҜК̣
ԚӅԮԒԈӍӉ
ҢԨӇҤԊО́О̀
О̆О̂О̃ӦӦ̄ӨӨ̄
Ө́Ө̆ӪҨԤҦР̌
ҎԖҪС̣С̱Т̌Т̣
ҬԎУ̃Ӱ
Ӱ́ӲҮҮ́ҰХ̣Х̱
Х̮Х̑ҲӼӾҺҺ̈
ԦҴҶӴӋҸҼ
ҾЫ̆Ы̄ӸҌЭ̆Э̄
Э̇ӬӬ́Ӭ̄Ю̆Ю̈Ю̈́
Ю̄Я̆Я̄Я̈ԜӀ
Archaic letters
ҀѺ
ОУѠѼѾ
ѢѤѦ
ѪѨѬѮ
ѰѲԌ
ѴѶԘ
ԢԔԠԞ

History

Historically, Cyrillic U evolved as a specifically East Slavic short form of the digraph оу used in ancient Slavic texts to represent /u/. The digraph was itself a direct loan from the Greek alphabet, where the combination ου (omicron-upsilon) was also used to represent /u/. Later, the o was removed, leaving the modern upsilon-only form.

Consequently, the form of the letter is derived from Greek upsilon Υ υ, which was parallelly also taken over into the Cyrillic alphabet in another form, as Izhitsa Ѵ. (The letter Izhitsa was removed from the Russian alphabet in the orthography reform of 1917/19.)

It is normally romanised as "u", but in Kazakh, it is romanised as "w".

In the Cyrillic numeral system, The Cyrillic letter U had a value of 400.

In other languages

In Tuvan the Cyrillic letter can be written as a double vowel.[1][2]

Similarity with Y (uppercase): The grapheme on the left is clearly a Cyrillic U, the one in the middle may represent both letters, the one on the right is clearly a Greek or Latin Y.

Computing codes

Character information
PreviewУу
Unicode nameCYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER UCYRILLIC SMALL LETTER U
Encodingsdecimalhexdecimalhex
Unicode1059U+04231091U+0443
UTF-8208 163D0 A3209 131D1 83
Numeric character referenceУУуу
Named character referenceУу
KOI8-R and KOI8-U245F5213D5
Code page 855232E8231E7
Code page 86614793227E3
Windows-1251211D3243F3
ISO-8859-5195C3227E3
Macintosh Cyrillic14793243F3

References

  1. "Tuvan language, alphabet and pronunciation". omniglot.com. Retrieved 14 June 2016.
  2. Campbell, George L.; King, Gareth (24 July 2013). "Compendium of the World's Languages". Routledge. Retrieved 14 June 2016 via Google Books.
  3. However, many Dungan books are set using Ӯ, with macron, instead of Ў, with breve, like the Dungan-Russian dictionary (1968). There is no ambiguity since it is the only У-with-a-diacritic in Dungan. It is used in Dungan syllables for which pinyin would use -u except in those with labial consonants (in du, ' nu, lu, gu, hu, zu, ru, etc. but not bu or mu)
  • The dictionary definition of У at Wiktionary
  • The dictionary definition of у at Wiktionary
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.