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

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...

. It commonly represents the close back rounded vowel , 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''), with the lowercase Cyrillic letter U's form being identical to that of small Latin letter Y.

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 BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...

, where the combination (

omicron Omicron (, ; uppercase Ο, lowercase ο, ) is the fifteenth 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 contrast to '' o ...

upsilon Upsilon (, ; uppercase Υ, lowercase υ; ''ýpsilon'' ) or ypsilon is the twentieth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, has a value of 400. It is derived from the phoenician alphabet, Phoenician Waw (letter), waw ...

) 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 Izhitsa (Ѵ, ѵ; italics: ; OCS: ѷжица, Russian: ижица, Ukrainian: іжиця) is a letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet and several later alphabets, usually the last in the row. It originates from the Greek letter upsilon (Y, υ) ...

. (The letter Izhitsa was removed from the

Russian alphabet The Russian alphabet (, or , more traditionally) is the script used to write the Russian language. The modern Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters: twenty consonants (, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ), ten vowels (, , , , , , , , , ) ...

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. In certain languages, U is used to mark labialization.

Related letters and other similar characters

*Υ υ : Greek letter Upsilon *U u : Latin letter U *Ú ú : Latin letter Ú *Y y : Latin letter Y *Ў ў : Cyrillic letter Short U, used in Belarusian, Dungan,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 Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...

would use ''-u'' except in those with labial consonants (in ''du'', ' ''nu'', ''lu'', ''gu'', ''hu'', ''zu'', ''ru'', etc. but not ''bu'' or ''mu'') 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, 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, Bashkir, Dungan and other languages *Ұ ұ : Cyrillic letter Straight U with stroke, used in Kazakh *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 *У̊: Cyrillic letter U with ring, used in shugnhi orthography.

Computing codes

References

External links

* * {{Cyrillic navbox Cyrillic letters Vowel letters