U (Cyrillic)
Encyclopedia
U is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet
. It commonly represents the close back rounded vowel
/u/, somewhat like the pronunciation of ⟨oo⟩ in "boot". The forms of the Cyrillic letter U are similar to the lowercase of the Latin letter Y (Y y; Y y), but, as with most Cyrillic letters, the upper and lowercase forms are similar in shape differing mainly in size and vertical placement.
short form of the digraph ⟨оу
⟩ used in ancient Slavic
texts to represent /u/. The digraph was itself a direct loan from the Greek alphabet
, where the combination ⟨ου⟩ (omicron
-upsilon
) was also used to represent /u/.
Consequently, the form of the letter is derived from Greek upsilon
⟨Υ υ⟩, which was parallelly also taken over into the Cyrillic alphabet in another form, as Izhitsa
⟨⟩. (The letter Izhitsa was removed from the Russian alphabet
in the orthography reform of 1917/19.)
However, many Dungan books are in fact set using (with macron) instead of Ў
with breve, e.g. the Dungan-Russian dictionary (1968). There is never an ambiguity, as this is the only У-with-a-diacritic in Dungan. It is used in Dungan syllables where pinyin
would use -u, except in those with labial consonants (i.e. in du, ' nu, lu, gu, hu, zu, ru, etc., but not bu or mu)
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
. It commonly represents the close back rounded vowel
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....
/u/, somewhat like the pronunciation of ⟨oo⟩ in "boot". The forms of the Cyrillic letter U are similar to the lowercase of the Latin letter Y (Y y; Y y), but, as with most Cyrillic letters, the upper and lowercase forms are similar in shape differing mainly in size and vertical placement.
History
Historically, Cyrillic U evolved as a specifically East SlavicOld East Slavic language
Old East Slavic or Old Ruthenian was a language used in 10th-15th centuries by East Slavs in the Kievan Rus' and states which evolved after the collapse of the Kievan Rus...
short form of the digraph ⟨оу
Uk (Cyrillic)
Uk is a letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet. It was originally a digraph of the Cyrillic letters O and U or less frequently O and Izhitsa . To save space, it was often written as a vertical ligature , called "monograph Uk"...
⟩ used in ancient Slavic
Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavic was the first literary Slavic language, first developed by the 9th century Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius who were credited with standardizing the language and using it for translating the Bible and other Ancient Greek...
texts to represent /u/. The digraph was itself a direct loan from the Greek alphabet
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...
, where the combination ⟨ου⟩ (omicron
Omicron
Omicron is the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 70. It is rarely used in mathematics because it is indistinguishable from the Latin letter O and easily confused with the digit 0...
-upsilon
Upsilon
Upsilon is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 400. It is derived from the Phoenician waw. The name of the letter is pronounced in Modern Greek, and in English , , or...
) was also used to represent /u/.
Consequently, the form of the letter is derived from Greek upsilon
Upsilon
Upsilon is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 400. It is derived from the Phoenician waw. The name of the letter is pronounced in Modern Greek, and in English , , or...
⟨Υ υ⟩, which was parallelly also taken over into the Cyrillic alphabet in another form, as Izhitsa
Izhitsa
Izhitsa is a letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet. It was used to represent ypsilon in words derived from Greek, such as . It represented the same sound /i/ as the normal letter и in Russian...
⟨⟩. (The letter Izhitsa was removed from the Russian alphabet
Russian alphabet
The Russian alphabet is a form of the Cyrillic script, developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
in the orthography reform of 1917/19.)
Related letters and other similar characters
- Υ υ : Greek letter Upsilon
- U u : Latin letter UUU is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details....
- Y y : Latin letter YYY is the twenty-fifth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet and represents either a vowel or a consonant in English.-Name:In Latin, Y was named Y Graeca "Greek Y". This was pronounced as I Graeca "Greek I", since Latin speakers had trouble pronouncing , which was not a native sound...
- Ў ў : Cyrillic letter Short U, used in BelarusianBelarusian languageThe Belarusian language , sometimes referred to as White Russian or White Ruthenian, is the language of the Belarusian people...
, DunganDungan languageThe Dungan language is a Sinitic language spoken by the Dungan of Central Asia, an ethnic group related to the Hui people of China.-History:...
, Siberian Eskimo (Yuit), UzbekUzbek languageUzbek is a Turkic language and the official language of Uzbekistan. It has about 25.5 million native speakers, and it is spoken by the Uzbeks in Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia...
: Cyrillic letter U with macron, used in TajikTajik languageTajik, Tajik Persian, or Tajiki, is a variety of modern Persian spoken in Central Asia. Historically Tajiks called their language zabani farsī , meaning Persian language in English; the term zabani tajikī, or Tajik language, was introduced in the 20th century by the Soviets...
: Cyrillic letter U with diaeresis, used in Altai (Oyrot), KhakasKhakas languageKhakas is a Turkic language spoken by the Khakas people, who mainly live in the southern Siberian Khakas Republic, or Khakassia, in Russia...
, GagauzGagauz languageThe Gagauz language is a Turkic language, spoken by the Gagauz people, and the official language of Gagauzia, Moldova. There are two dialects, Bulgar Gagauzi and Maritime Gagauzi. This is a different language from Balkan Gagauz Turkish....
, KhantyKhanty languageKhanty or Xanty language, also known previously as the Ostyak language, is a language of the Khant peoples. It is spoken in Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous okrugs, as well as in Aleksandrovsky and Kargosoksky districts of Tomsk Oblast in Russia...
, MariMari languageThe Mari language , spoken by more than 600,000 people, belongs to the Uralic language family. It is spoken primarily in the Mari Republic of the Russian Federation as well as in the area along the Vyatka river basin and eastwards to the Urals...
: Cyrillic letter U with double acute, used in ChuvashChuvash languageChuvash is a Turkic language spoken in central Russia, primarily in the Chuvash Republic and adjacent areas. It is the only surviving member of the Oghur branch of Turkic languages....
: Cyrillic letter straight U, used in MongolianMongolian languageThe Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...
, KazakhKazakh languageKazakh is a Turkic language which belongs to the Kipchak branch of the Turkic languages, closely related to Nogai and Karakalpak....
, TatarTatar languageThe Tatar language , or more specifically Kazan Tatar, is a Turkic language spoken by the Tatars of historical Kazan Khanate, including modern Tatarstan and Bashkiria...
, BashkirBashkir languageThe Bashkir language is a Turkic language, and is the language of the Bashkirs. It is co-official with Russian in the Republic of Bashkortostan.-Speakers:...
, DunganDungan languageThe Dungan language is a Sinitic language spoken by the Dungan of Central Asia, an ethnic group related to the Hui people of China.-History:...
and other languages : Cyrillic letter Straight U with stroke, used in KazakhKazakh languageKazakh is a Turkic language which belongs to the Kipchak branch of the Turkic languages, closely related to Nogai and Karakalpak....
However, many Dungan books are in fact set using (with macron) instead of Ў
Short U
Short U is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.The only Slavic language using this letter is the Belarusian Cyrillic alphabet....
with breve, e.g. the Dungan-Russian dictionary (1968). There is never an ambiguity, as this is the only У-with-a-diacritic in Dungan. It is used in Dungan syllables where pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
would use -u, except in those with labial consonants (i.e. in du, ' nu, lu, gu, hu, zu, ru, etc., but not bu or mu)
Computing codes
| character | У | у | ||
| Unicode name | CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER U | CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER U | ||
| character encoding | decimal | hex | decimal | hex |
| Unicode Unicode Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems... |
1059 | 0423 | 1091 | 0443 |
| UTF-8 UTF-8 UTF-8 is a multibyte character encoding for Unicode. Like UTF-16 and UTF-32, UTF-8 can represent every character in the Unicode character set. Unlike them, it is backward-compatible with ASCII and avoids the complications of endianness and byte order marks... |
208 163 | D0 A3 | 209 131 | D1 83 |
| Numeric character reference Numeric character reference A numeric character reference is a common markup construct used in SGML and other SGML-related markup languages such as HTML and XML. It consists of a short sequence of characters that, in turn, represent a single character from the Universal Character Set of Unicode... |
У | У | у | у |
| KOI8-R KOI8-R KOI8-R is an 8-bit character encoding, designed to cover Russian, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet. It also happens to cover Bulgarian, but is not used since CP1251 is accepted. A derivative encoding is KOI8-U, which adds Ukrainian characters... and KOI8-U KOI8-U KOI8-U is an 8-bit character encoding, designed to cover Ukrainian, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet. It is based on KOI8-R, which covers Russian and Bulgarian, but replaces eight graphic characters with four Ukrainian letters Ґ, Є, І, and Ї in both upper case and lower case.In Microsoft Windows,... |
245 | F5 | 213 | D5 |
| Code page 855 Code page 855 Code page 855 is a code page used under MS-DOS to write Cyrillic script. This code page is not used much.-Code page layout:... |
232 | E8 | 231 | E7 |
| Code page 866 Code page 866 Code page 866 is a code page used under MS-DOS to write Cyrillic script. It is based on the "alternative character set" of GOST 19768-87... |
147 | 93 | 227 | E3 |
| Windows-1251 Windows-1251 Windows-1251 is a popular 8-bit character encoding, designed to cover languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet such as Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian Cyrillic and other languages... |
211 | D3 | 243 | F3 |
| ISO-8859-5 | 195 | C3 | 227 | E3 |
| Macintosh Cyrillic | 147 | 93 | 243 | F3 |