U (

hiragana is a Japanese language, Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", ...

: う,

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 fr ...

: ウ) is one of the Japanese

kana are syllabary, syllabaries used to write Japanese phonology, Japanese phonological units, Mora (linguistics), morae. In current usage, ''kana'' most commonly refers to ''hiragana'' and ''katakana''. It can also refer to their ancestor , wh ...

, 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 ...

, 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 dis ...

(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 fil ...

kana. In the

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

, they occupied the 24th position, between む and ゐ. 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 Ainu (, ), or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu (), is a language spoken by a few elderly members of the Ainu people on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is a member of the Ainu language family, itself considered a language family isola ...

, 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 in 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 t ...

, from the

kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, 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 and are ...

宇 (pronounced ''u'' and meaning ''

space Space is a three-dimensional continuum containing positions and directions. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions. Modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless ...

'').

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 the principal language of the Japonic languages, Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people. It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese dia ...

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

loanword A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...

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

Tutankhamun Tutankhamun or Tutankhamen, (; ), was an Egyptian pharaoh who ruled during the late Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt. Born Tutankhaten, he instituted the restoration of the traditional polytheistic form of an ...

cartouche upalt=A stone face carved with coloured hieroglyphics. Two cartouches - ovoid shapes with hieroglyphics inside - are visible at the bottom., Birth and throne cartouches of Pharaoh KV17.html" ;"title="Seti I, from KV17">Seti I, from KV17 at the ...

'', the recent loan ''cartouche'' uses the new phonetic technique, but the older loan ''Tutankhamun'' uses ツ (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 (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 mora should be pronounced voiced, for instance, on sounds that have undergone rendaku (sequential voicing). The , coll ...

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. Description In contrast to modern Japanese, originally hiragana had several forms for a single sound. For example, while the hiragana reading "ha" has only one form in modern ...

a variant of う is appeared that retains cursive

Kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, 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 and are ...

宇.

Stroke order

The hiragana う is written in two

stroke Stroke is a medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemor ...

s: # 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.

Derivation

Variant forms

Stroke order

Other communicative representations

Full Braille representation

Computer encodings

References