U (Cyrillic)#Related letters and other similar characters
{{short description|Cyrillic letter}}
{{distinguish|text=the Latin letters U or Y, the Greek letters Υ (upsilon) or γ (gamma), or the Cyrillic letter Ү (ue)}}
{{More citations needed|date=February 2007}}
{{infobox grapheme
| letter = У у
| script = Cyrillic
| type = Alphabet
| typedesc = ic
| name = U
| image = Cyrillic letter U - uppercase and lowercase.svg
| imagealt =
| phonemes = [{{IPA link|u}}], [{{IPA|ʊw}}]
| number = 400 (Cyrillic numerals)
| fam2 = Ѹ ѹ
| language = Old Church Slavonic
| unicode = U+0423, U+0443
| equivalents = U u
}}
U (У у; italics: У у) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It commonly represents the close back rounded vowel {{IPA|/u/}}, somewhat like the pronunciation of {{angle bracket|oo}} 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
File:Azbuka Benois - У.jpg' 1904 alphabet book. It shows Ulitsa (street) and uraganʺ (hurricane).]]
File:Russische Schmetterlingsmine PFM-1.jpg training mine, distinguishable from the live version by the presence of the letter У (short for учебный, uchebnyy, "for training").]]
Historically, Cyrillic U evolved as a specifically East Slavic short form of the digraph {{angle bracket|оу}} used in ancient Slavic texts to represent {{IPA|/u/}}. The digraph was itself a direct loan from the Greek alphabet, where the combination {{angle bracket|ου}} (omicron-upsilon) was also used to represent {{IPA|/u/}}. Later, the o was removed, leaving the modern upsilon-only form.
Consequently, the form of the letter is derived from Greek upsilon {{angle bracket|Υ υ}}, which was parallelly also taken over into the Cyrillic alphabet in another form, as Izhitsa {{angle bracket|Ѵ}}. (The letter Izhitsa was removed from the Russian alphabet 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.{{cite web|url=http://www.omniglot.com/writing/tuvan.php|title=Tuvan language, alphabet and pronunciation|work=omniglot.com|access-date=14 June 2016}}{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jWwqAAAAQBAJ|title=Compendium of the World's Languages|first1=George L.|last1=Campbell|first2=Gareth|last2=King|date=24 July 2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781136258459|access-date=14 June 2016|via=Google Books}}
In certain languages, U is used to mark labialization.
Related letters and other similar characters
File:Similarity of Y and Cyrillic U.svg (uppercase): The grapheme on the left is clearly a Cyrillic U, the one in the middle may represent both letters, the one on the right is clearly a Greek or Latin Y.]]
- 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 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.
{{clear|left}}
Computing codes
{{charmap
|0423|name1=Cyrillic Capital Letter U
|0443|name2=Cyrillic Small Letter U
|map1=KOI8-R and KOI8-U |map1char1=F5 |map1char2=D5
|map2=Code page 855 |map2char1=E8 |map2char2=E7
|map3=Code page 866 |map3char1=93 |map3char2=E3
|map4=Windows-1251 |map4char1=D3 |map4char2=F3
|map5=ISO-8859-5 |map5char1=C3 |map5char2=E3
|map6=Macintosh Cyrillic |map6char1=93 |map6char2=F3
}}
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- {{Wiktionary-inline|У}}
- {{Wiktionary-inline|у}}
{{Cyrillic navbox}}