U (う in

hiragana is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrast ...

or ウ in

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived f ...

) is one of the Japanese

kana The term may refer to a number of syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. Such syllabaries include (1) the original kana, or , which were Chinese characters (kanji) used phonetically to transcribe Japanese, the most p ...

, each of which represents one mora. In the modern Japanese system of

alphabetical order Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the position of the characters in the conventional ordering of an alphabet. It is one of the methods of collation. In mathematics, a lexicographical order is t ...

, they occupy the third place in the modern

Gojūon In the Japanese language, the is a traditional system ordering kana characters by their component phonemes, roughly analogous to alphabetical order. The "fifty" (''gojū'') in its name refers to the 5×10 grid in which the characters are disp ...

(五十音) system of

collating Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office fili ...

kana. In the

Iroha The is a Japanese poem. Originally the poem was attributed to the founder of the Shingon Esoteric sect of Buddhism in Japan, Kūkai, but more modern research has found the date of composition to be later in the Heian period (794–1179). Th ...

, they occupied the 24th position, between む and

ゐ (: , : ) is a nearly-obsolete Japanese (Japanese phonetic characters, each of which represents one mora). The combination of a W-column kana letter with in was introduced to represent iin the 19th century and 20th century. It is presumed th ...

. In the Gojūon chart (ordered by columns, from right to left), う lies in the first column (あ行, "column A") and the third row (う段, "row U"). Both represent the sound . In the Ainu language, the small katakana ゥ represents a diphthong, and is written as ''w'' in the Latin alphabet. The hiragana form with dakuten, ゔ, representing the sound "v", is rarely seen on older words, since the sound does not occur in native Japanese words. However, it is becoming more common with Western influences.

Derivation

Both う and ウ originate, via

man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of thi ...

, from the

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

宇 (pronounced ''u'' and meaning ''

space Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually cons ...

'').

Variant forms

Scaled-down versions of the characters (ぅ, ゥ) are used to create new morae that do not exist in the

Japanese language is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ...

, such as トゥ (tu). This convention is relatively new, and many older

loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...

s do not use it. For example, in the phrase ''

Tutankhamun Tutankhamun (, egy, twt-ꜥnḫ-jmn), Egyptological pronunciation Tutankhamen () (), sometimes referred to as King Tut, was an Egyptian pharaoh who was the last of his royal family to rule during the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty (ruled ...

cartouche In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oval with a line at one end tangent to it, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name. The first examples of the cartouche are associated with pharaohs at the end of the Third Dynasty, but the f ...

'', the recent loan ''cartouche'' uses the new phonetic technique, but the older loan ''Tutankhamun'' uses

ツ Tsu (hiragana: つ, katakana: ツ) is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora. Both are phonemically although for phonological reasons, the actual pronunciation is . The small kana っ/ッ, known as sokuon, are identic ...

(tsu) as an approximation:

ツタンカーメンのカルトゥーシュ
''Tsutankāmen no karutūshu''

The character う is also used, in its full-sized form, to lengthen "o" sounds. For example, the word 構想 is written in hiragana as こうそう (kousou), pronounced ''kōsō''. In a few words the character

お In Japanese writing, the kana お (hiragana) and オ (katakana) occupy the fifth place, between え and か, in the modern Gojūon (五十音) system of collating kana. In the Iroha, they occupy the 27th, between の and く. In the table a ...

(o) is used instead for morphological or historical reasons. The character ウ can take

dakuten The , colloquially , is a diacritic most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced, for instance, on sounds that have undergone rendaku (sequential voicing). The , ...

to form ヴ (vu), a sound foreign to the

and traditionally approximated by ブ (bu). In

hentaigana In the Japanese writing system, are variant forms of hiragana. History Today, with few exceptions, there is only one hiragana for each of the forty-five moras that are written without diacritics or digraphs. However, traditionally there ...

a variant of う is appeared that retains cursive

Kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

宇.

Stroke order

The hiragana う is written in two strokes: # At the top of the character, a short diagonal crook: proceeding diagonally downwards from the left, then reversing direction and ending at the lower left. # A broad curving stroke: beginning at the left, rising slightly, then curving back and ending at the left. The katakana ウ is written in three strokes: # At the top of the character, a short vertical stroke, written from top to bottom. # A similar stroke, but lower and positioned at the left. # A broad angled stroke: beginning as a horizontal line written from left to right, then reversing direction and proceeding downwards from right to left as a curved diagonal. The horizontal line must touch both the other strokes. Apart from the short diagonal, the character is identical to フ.

Other communicative representations

* Full Braille representation When lengthening "-u" or "-o" syllables in Japanese braille, a Chōonpu is always used, as in standard katakana usage instead of adding an う / ウ. * Computer encodings

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:U (Kana) Specific kana