U (У у; italics: ''У у'') is a letter of the

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking c ...

. It commonly represents the

close back rounded vowel The close back rounded vowel, or high back rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is u. I ...

, somewhat like the pronunciation of in "boot" or rule. 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.

History

Historically, Cyrillic U evolved as a specifically East Slavic short form of the digraph used in ancient Slavic texts to represent . The digraph was itself a direct loan from the

Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as ...

, where the combination (

omicron Omicron (; uppercase Ο, lowercase ο, ell, όμικρον) is the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet. This letter is derived from the Phoenician letter ayin: . In classical Greek, omicron represented the close-mid back rounded vowel in contr ...

upsilon Upsilon (, ; uppercase Υ, lowercase υ; el, ''ýpsilon'' ) or ypsilon is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, grc, Υʹ, label=none has a value of 400. It is derived from the Phoenician waw . E ...

) was also used to represent . Later, the o was removed, leaving the modern upsilon-only form. Consequently, the form of the letter is derived from Greek

, which was parallelly also taken over into the Cyrillic alphabet in another form, as Izhitsa . (The letter Izhitsa was removed from the

Russian alphabet The Russian alphabet (russian: ру́сский алфави́т, russkiy alfavit, , label=none, or russian: ру́сская а́збука, russkaya azbuka, label=none, more traditionally) is the script used to write the Russian language. I ...

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 Cyrillic numerals are a numeral system derived from the Cyrillic script, developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the late 10th century. It was used in the First Bulgarian Empire and by South and East Slavic peoples. The system was used in ...

, the Cyrillic letter U had a value of 400.

In other languages

In Tuvan the Cyrillic letter can be written as a double vowel.

Related letters and other similar characters

*Υ υ : Greek letter Upsilon *U u : Latin letter U *Y y : Latin letter Y *Ў ў : Cyrillic letter Short U, used in Belarusian,

Dungan Dungan may refer to: * Donegan, an Irish surname, sometimes spelled Dungan * Dungan people, a group of Muslim people of Hui origin ** Dungan language ** Dungan, sometimes used to refer to Hui Chinese people generally * Dungan Mountains in Sibi Di ...

, Siberian Eskimo (Yuit), Uzbek *Ӯ ӯ : Cyrillic letter U with macron, used in Tajik and Carpatho-Rusyn *Ӱ ӱ : Cyrillic letter U with diaeresis, used in Altai (Oyrot),

Khakas The Khakas (also spelled Khakass; Khakas: , ''khakas'', , ''tadar'', , ''khakastar'', , ''tadarlar'') are a Turkic indigenous people of Siberia, who live in the republic of Khakassia, Russia. They speak the Khakas language. The Khakhassi ...

, Gagauz, Khanty, Mari *Ӳ ӳ : Cyrillic letter U with double acute, used in Chuvash *Ү ү : Cyrillic letter straight U, used in Mongolian, Kazakh,

Tatar The Tatars ()Tatar
in the Collins English Dictionary is an umbrella term for different

, Bashkir,

and other languages *Ұ ұ : Cyrillic letter Straight U with stroke, used in KazakhHowever, 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 Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...

would use ''-u'' except in those with labial consonants (in ''du'', ' ''nu'', ''lu'', ''gu'', ''hu'', ''zu'', ''ru'', etc. but not ''bu'' or ''mu'') *Ꭹ Ꮍ : The syllables ''gi'' and ''mu'' of the Cherokee syllabary; Ꭹ (''gi'') notably appearing in the Cherokee self-designation ᏣᎳᎩ (''Tsalagi'') *ע: The Hebrew letter Ayin

Computing codes

References

External links

* *{{Wiktionary-inline, у Vowel letters