U
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  Cursive script 'u' and capital 'U'
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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. Symbol 'U' is the chemical symbol for uranium.
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History [edit]
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 [edit]
In most languages that use the Latin alphabet, 'U' represents the close back rounded vowel /u/[citation needed].
In English the letter is pronounced differently in different words. 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'). 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'.
U is also the mathematics symbol for Union, which is used mainly for Venn Diagrams and Geometry.
Related letters and other similar characters [edit]
- N n : Latin letter N (an upside-down "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 with breve
- Ü ü : Latin letter U with diaeresis/umlaut
- Ʉ ʉ : Latin letter U with bar
Computing codes [edit]
| Character | U | u | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U | LATIN SMALL LETTER U | ||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | decimal | hex |
| Unicode | 85 | U+0055 | 117 | U+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 Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
Other representations [edit]
References [edit]
- ^ "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 2009-06-21.
External links [edit]
Media related to U at Wikimedia Commons
The dictionary definition of U at Wiktionary- The dictionary definition of u at Wiktionary
Media related to 
The dictionary definition of | 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 | ||
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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 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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