Yu or Ju (Ю ю; italics: ''Ю ю'') 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 ...

used in East Slavic and Bulgarian alphabets. In English, Yu is commonly

romanized Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...

as (or ). In turn, is used, where is available, in transcriptions of English letter (in

open syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological " ...

s), and also of the digraph. The sound , like in French and in German, may also be approximated by the letter .

Pronunciation

It is a so-called

iotated In Slavic languages, iotation (, ) is a form of palatalization that occurs when a consonant comes into contact with a palatal approximant from the succeeding phoneme. The is represented by iota (ι) in the Cyrillic alphabet and the Greek alphabe ...

vowel, pronounced in isolation as , like the pronunciation of in "human". After a

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...

, no distinct sound is pronounced, but the consonant is softened. The exact pronunciation of the vowel sound of in Russian depends also on the succeeding sound because of

allophony In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...

. Before a soft consonant, it is , the close central rounded vowel, as in 'rude'. Before a hard consonant or at the end of a word, the result is a back vowel , as in "new".

History

Apart from the form ''I-O'', in early Slavonic manuscripts the letter appears also in a mirrored form ''O-I'' (). It is the latter form that is probably the original, precisely displaying the Greek 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 ...

iota Iota (; uppercase: Ι, lowercase: ι; ) is the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Yodh. Letters that arose from this letter include the Latin I and J, the Cyrillic І (І, і), Yi (Ї, ї), and ...

(οι). At the time that 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 ...

was adapted to the Slavonic language giving rise to the Cyrillic alphabet, it denoted the

close front rounded vowel The close front rounded vowel, or high front rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is /y/, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is y. Ac ...

in educated Greek speech. The close ''front'' rounded vowel does not appear in East Slavic. See above. There was another way for it to lead to the modern form. By the analogy to several 'iotated' letters Ѥ, ІА, Ѩ and Ѭ, the ancient ligature (or letter) Uk / possibly had its iotated form /. Also, the iotified big Yus merged itself to in East Slavic languages.

Related letters and other similar characters

*У у : Cyrillic letter U *Ү ү : Cyrillic letter Ue *Û û : Latin letter U with circumflex *Ū ū : Latin letter U with macron *Ǔ ǔ : Latin letter U with caron

Computing codes

References

External links

* *{{Wiktionary-inline, ю Vowel letters Cyrillic ligatures