U
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Cursive script 'u' and capital 'U' in the U.S. D'Nealian script style
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U (named u /ˈjuː/, plural ues[1][2]) is the twinty-first letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet an a vowel in the Inglis alphabet. Seembol 'U' is the chemical seembol for uranium.
History
eeditThe letter U ultimately comes frae the Semitic letter Waw bi wey o the letter Y. See the letter Y for details.
Durin the late Middlin Ages, twa forms o 'v' developit, which wur baith uised for its auncestor 'u' an modren 'v'. The pyntit fairm 'v' wis written at the beginnin o a wird, while a roondit fairm 'u' wis uised in the middlin or end, regairdless o soond. Sae whauras 'valor' an 'excuse' appeared as in modren printin, 'hae' an 'upon' wur printed 'haue' an 'vpon'. The first distinction atween the letters 'u' an 'v' is recordit in a Gothic alphabet frae 1386, whaur 'v' precedit 'u'. Bi the mid-16t century, the 'v' fairm wis uised tae represent the consonant an 'u' the vowel soond, givin us the modren letter 'u'. Caipital 'U' wis nae acceptit as a distinct letter till mony years later.[3]
Uisage
eeditIn maist leids that uise the Latin alphabet, 'U' represents the close back roondit vowel /u/.
In Inglis the letter is pronoonced differently in different wirds. In closed syllables, it commonly represents /ʌ/ ("short U" as in 'duck') or /ʊ/ (as in 'put'). In open syllables, it commonly represents /u(ː)/ (as in 'blue') or /ju(ː)/ ("long U" as in 'mule'). Addeetionally, the letter U is uised in text messagin an internet an ither written slang tae denote 'you', bi virtue o baith bein pronoonced [juː].
In French the letter represents the close front roondit vowel; /u/ is representit bi 'ou'.
U is an aa the mathematics seembol for Union, which is uised mainly for Venn diagrams an geometry.
Relatit letters an ither similar characters
eedit- N n : Latin letter N (an upside-doun "U u")
- 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 wi breve
- Ü ü : Latin letter U wi diaeresis/umlaut
- Ʉ ʉ : Latin letter U wit bar
Computin codes
eeditCharacter | U | u | ||
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Unicode name | LATIN CAIPITAL LETTER U | LATIN SMAA LETTER U | ||
Encodins | decimal | hex | decimal | hex |
Unicode | 85 | U+0055 | 117 | U+0075 |
UTF-8 | 85 | 55 | 117 | 75 |
Numeric chairacter reference | U | U | u | u |
EBCDIC faimily | 228 | E4 | 164 | A4 |
ASCII 1 | 85 | 55 | 117 | 75 |
- 1 An aa for encodins based on ASCII, includin the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 an Macintosh faimilies o encodins.
Ither representations
eeditNATO phonetic | Morse code |
Uniform |
[[File:Sign language {{{fingerspelling}}}.svg|90px]] | |||
Seegnal banner | Banner semaphore | American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspellin) | Braille dots-136 |
References
eedit- ↑ "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, page 19.
Ues is the plural of the name of the letter; the plural of the letter itself is rendered 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 978-1-56898-737-8. Retrieved 21 Juin 2009.
Freemit airtins
eedit- Media relatit tae U at Wikimedia Commons
- The dictionar defineetion o U at Wiktionary
- The dictionar defineetion o u at Wiktionary
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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