ISO basic Latin alphabet | |||
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Aa | Bb | Cc | Dd |
Ee | Ff | Gg | Hh |
Ii | Jj | Kk | Ll |
Mm | Nn | Oo | Pp |
Rr | Ss | Tt | |
Uu | Vv | Ww | Xx |
Yy | Zz |
U (named u /ˈjuː/, plural ues)[1][2] is the twenty-first letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet and a vowel in the English alphabet.
Contents |
History
The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details.
During the late Middle Ages, two forms of "v" developed, which were both used for its ancestor u and modern v. The pointed form "v" was written at the beginning of a word, while a rounded form "u" was used in the middle or end, regardless of sound. So whereas valor and excuse appeared as in modern printing, "have" and "upon" were printed haue and vpon. The first distinction between the letters "u" and "v" is recorded in a Gothic alphabet from 1386, where "v" preceded "u". By the mid-16th century, the "v" form was used to represent the consonant and "u" the vowel sound, giving us the modern letter "u". Capital "U" was not accepted as a distinct letter until many years later.[3]
Usage
In most languages that use the Latin alphabet, ⟨U⟩ represents the close back rounded vowel /u/. In English it commonly represents /ʌ/ or /ʊ/ ("short U") as in duck, or /ju(ː)/ ("long U") as in mule. Additionally, the letter U is used in text messaging and internet and other written slang to denote you, by virtue of both being pronounced [juː]. In French the letter represents the close front rounded vowel; /u/ is represented by ⟨ou⟩.
Related letters and other similar characters
- Υ υ : Greek letter Upsilon
- У у : Cyrillic letter U
- V v : Latin letter V
- W w : Latin letter W
- Μ μ : Greek letter Mu
- Ŭ ŭ : Latin letter U with breve
- Ü ü : Latin letter U with diaeresis/umlaut
- Ʉ ʉ : Latin letter U with bar
Computing codes
character | U | u | ||
Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U | LATIN SMALL LETTER U | ||
character encoding | decimal | hex | decimal | hex |
Unicode | 85 | 0055 | 117 | 0075 |
UTF-8 | 85 | 55 | 117 | 75 |
Numeric character reference | U | U | u | u |
EBCDIC family | 228 | E4 | 164 | A4 |
ASCII 1 | 85 | 55 | 117 | 75 |
1 and all encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
Other representations
References
- ^ "U" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993)
- ^ Brown & Kiddle (1870) The institutes of English grammar, p 19.
Ues is the plural of the name of the letter; the plural of the letter itself is U's, Us, u's, or us. - ^ Pflughaupt, Laurent (2008). Letter by Letter: An Alphabetical Miscellany. trans. Gregory Bruhn. Princeton Architectural Press. pp. 123–124. ISBN 9781568987378. http://books.google.com/books?id=63Qnbt2CMiMC&pg=PA124. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
External links
Aa | Bb | Cc | Dd | Ee | Ff | Gg | Hh | Ii | Jj | Kk | Ll | Mm | Nn | Oo | Pp | Rr | Ss | Tt | Uu | Vv | Ww | Xx | Yy | Zz | ||
Letter U with diacritics
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Úú | Ùù | Ŭŭ | Ûû | Ǔǔ | Ůů | Üü | Ǘǘ | Ǜǜ | Ǚǚ | Ǖǖ | Űű | Ũũ | Ṹṹ | Ųų | Ūū | Ṻṻ | Ủủ | Ȕȕ | Ȗȗ | Ưư | Ứứ | Ừừ | Ữữ | Ửử | Ựự | |
Ụụ | Ṳṳ | Ṷṷ | Ṵṵ | Ʉʉ | ᵾ | ᶙ | ||||||||||||||||||||
Related
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