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Uk (Cyrillic)
Encyclopedia
Uk is a letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet
. It was originally a digraph
of the Cyrillic letters O
(О о) and U
(У у) or less frequently O and Izhitsa
. To save space, it was often written as a vertical ligature , called "monograph Uk". In modern times, ⟨оу⟩ has been replaced by the simple ⟨у⟩.
In later manuscripts, the digraph Uk has three cases: lowercase ⟨ѹ⟩, uppercase ⟨Ѹ⟩, and an all-caps form which is used in all-capitals titles ⟨ОУ⟩.
. The Greek ligature Ou is frequently found in Greek medieval manuscripts and in some modern editions of classical texts. Modern Greek
still uses ⟨ου⟩ (omicron
-upsilon
) for /u/ but rarely uses the vertical ligature.
texts and only later taken over into South Slavic languages.
One can see this development in the Novgorod birch-bark letters
: The degree to which this letter was used here differed in two positions: in word-initial position or before a vowel (except for the jers
), and after a consonant.
Before a consonant, ⟨⟩ was used 89% of the time in the writings before 1100. By 1200, it was used 61% of the time, with the letter ⟨у⟩ used 14% of the time; by 1300, had reached 28%, surpassed by ⟨у⟩ at 45%. From the late 14th century on, there are no more instances of ⟨⟩ being used in this position, with ⟨у⟩ appearing 95% of the time.
The decrease in usage was more gradual after a consonant. Although there are no instances of the use of ⟨у⟩ in this position before c. 1200, ⟨⟩ gradually decreased from 88% before 1100 to 57% by 1200. The frequency of ⟨⟩ remained steady between 47% and 44% until 1400, when it experienced another decrease to 32%. Meanwhile, the use of ⟨у⟩ increased from 4% in the early 13th century, to 20% by the mid-13th century, 38% by the mid 14th century, and 58% by the early 15th century.
1.1.0 as and 0479, CYRILLIC CAPITAL/SMALL LETTER UK . It was later recognized that the glyph to be used for the letter had not been adequately specified, and it had been represented as either a digraph or monograph letter in different released fonts. There was also the difficulty that in written texts the letter may appear in lowercase , uppercase , or in all caps
(ОУ), which was not allowed for.
To resolve this ambiguity, Unicode 5.1 has deprecated the use of the original code points, introduced the new U+A64A and A64B, CYRILLIC CAPITAL/SMALL LETTER MONOGRAPH UK , and recommends composing the digraph with two individual characters ⟨о⟩+⟨у⟩
.
However, the recommended method may cause some text representation problems. Actually there was not modern letter У in the Old Church Slavonic orthography, and its code point was replaced in different Old Slavonic computer fonts with digraph or monograph forms of the Uk or with the tailed form of Izhitsa
. Tailed Izhitsa
may be used as a part of the digraph, but using the shape of the monograph Uk as a part of the digraph Uk is incorrect.
The minuscule monograph Uk was used in the Romanian Transitional Alphabet
to represent /u/, but due to font restrictions, the Ȣ ligature or Latin gamma are occasionally used instead.
Early Cyrillic alphabet
The Early Cyrillic alphabet is a writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the 9th or 10th century to write the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language...
. It was originally a digraph
Digraph (orthography)
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
of the Cyrillic letters O
O (Cyrillic)
O is a letter of the Cyrillic script.O commonly represents the close-mid back rounded vowel , like the pronunciation of ⟨o⟩ in "go".-History:The Cyrillic letter O was derived from the Greek letter Omicron ....
(О о) and U
U (Cyrillic)
U is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. It commonly represents the close back rounded vowel , somewhat like the pronunciation of ⟨oo⟩ in "boot"...
(У у) or less frequently O and 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...
. To save space, it was often written as a vertical ligature , called "monograph Uk". In modern times, ⟨оу⟩ has been replaced by the simple ⟨у⟩.
In later manuscripts, the digraph Uk has three cases: lowercase ⟨ѹ⟩, uppercase ⟨Ѹ⟩, and an all-caps form which is used in all-capitals titles ⟨ОУ⟩.
Borrowing from Greek
Both the horizontal and the vertical digraph were borrowed from the Greek alphabetGreek 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...
. The Greek ligature Ou is frequently found in Greek medieval manuscripts and in some modern editions of classical texts. Modern Greek
Modern Greek
Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...
still uses ⟨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...
) for /u/ but rarely uses the vertical ligature.
Development of the use of Uk in Old East Slavic
The simplification of the ligature ⟨⟩ to ⟨у⟩ was first brought about in Old 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...
texts and only later taken over into South Slavic languages.
One can see this development in the Novgorod birch-bark letters
Birch bark document
A birch bark document is a document written on pieces of birch bark. Such documents existed in several cultures. For instance, some Gandharan Buddhist texts have been found written on birch bark and preserved in clay jars....
: The degree to which this letter was used here differed in two positions: in word-initial position or before a vowel (except for the jers
Yer
The letter yer of the Cyrillic alphabet, also spelled jer or er, is known as the hard sign in the modern Russian and Rusyn alphabets and as er golyam in the Bulgarian alphabet...
), and after a consonant.
Before a consonant, ⟨⟩ was used 89% of the time in the writings before 1100. By 1200, it was used 61% of the time, with the letter ⟨у⟩ used 14% of the time; by 1300, had reached 28%, surpassed by ⟨у⟩ at 45%. From the late 14th century on, there are no more instances of ⟨⟩ being used in this position, with ⟨у⟩ appearing 95% of the time.
The decrease in usage was more gradual after a consonant. Although there are no instances of the use of ⟨у⟩ in this position before c. 1200, ⟨⟩ gradually decreased from 88% before 1100 to 57% by 1200. The frequency of ⟨⟩ remained steady between 47% and 44% until 1400, when it experienced another decrease to 32%. Meanwhile, the use of ⟨у⟩ increased from 4% in the early 13th century, to 20% by the mid-13th century, 38% by the mid 14th century, and 58% by the early 15th century.
Representation on computers
The letter Uk was first represented in UnicodeUnicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
1.1.0 as and 0479, CYRILLIC CAPITAL/SMALL LETTER UK . It was later recognized that the glyph to be used for the letter had not been adequately specified, and it had been represented as either a digraph or monograph letter in different released fonts. There was also the difficulty that in written texts the letter may appear in lowercase , uppercase , or in all caps
All caps
In typography, all caps refers to text or a font in which all letters are capital letters. All caps is usually used for emphasis. It is commonly seen in the titles on book covers, in advertisements and in newspaper headlines...
(ОУ), which was not allowed for.
To resolve this ambiguity, Unicode 5.1 has deprecated the use of the original code points, introduced the new U+A64A and A64B, CYRILLIC CAPITAL/SMALL LETTER MONOGRAPH UK , and recommends composing the digraph with two individual characters ⟨о⟩+⟨у⟩
.
However, the recommended method may cause some text representation problems. Actually there was not modern letter У in the Old Church Slavonic orthography, and its code point was replaced in different Old Slavonic computer fonts with digraph or monograph forms of the Uk or with the tailed form of 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...
. Tailed 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...
may be used as a part of the digraph, but using the shape of the monograph Uk as a part of the digraph Uk is incorrect.
The minuscule monograph Uk was used in the Romanian Transitional Alphabet
Romanian Cyrillic alphabet
The Romanian Cyrillic alphabet was used to write the Romanian language before 1860–1862, when it was officially replaced by a Latin-based Romanian alphabet. Cyrillic remained in occasional use until circa 1920...
to represent /u/, but due to font restrictions, the Ȣ ligature or Latin gamma are occasionally used instead.
Computing codes
| character | ||||||||
| Unicode name | CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER UK |
CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER UK |
CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER MONOGRAPH UK |
CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER MONOGRAPH UK |
||||
| character encoding | decimal | hex | decimal | hex | 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... |
1144 | 0478 | 1145 | 0479 | 42570 | A64A | 42571 | A64B |
| 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... |
209 184 | D1 B8 | 209 185 | D1 B9 | 234 153 138 | EA 99 8A | 234 153 139 | EA 99 8B |
| 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... |
Ѹ | Ѹ | ѹ | ѹ | Ꙋ | Ꙋ | ꙋ | ꙋ |