Not to be confused with
Korean 어 - eo.
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This article's factual accuracy is disputed. Please help to ensure that disputed facts are reliably sourced. See the relevant discussion on the talk page. (August 2010) |
Yu (Ю ю; italics: Ю ю) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. After a palatalized consonant, it represents the close back rounded vowel /u/, somewhat like the pronunciation of ⟨oo⟩ in "boot"; elsewhere it is a so-called iotated vowel representing the combination /ju/, like the pronunciation of ⟨you⟩ in "youth". In English, Yu is commonly romanized as ⟨yu⟩.
[edit] History
Apart from the form I-O, in early Slavonic manuscripts the letter appears also in a mirrored form O-I (Ꙕ, ꙕ). It is this form that is probably the original, precisely displaying the Greek combination omicron-iota (οι). At the time that the Greek alphabet was adapted to the Slavonic language (giving rise to the Cyrillic alphabet), this denoted the close front rounded vowel /y/ in educated Greek speech. This digraphic representation of /y/ was so basic for speakers of Greek that the simple letter upsilon (υ) representing the same sound came to be called υ ψιλόν (y psilon) "simple" υ in contrast to "complex" οι.
Probably in analogy to the 'iotated' letters Ѥ, ІА, Ѩ and Ѭ, which fulfilled similar functions in Slavonic, this OI ligature was soon mirrored to the modern form ю.[citation needed]
[edit] Related letters and other similar characters
[edit] Computing codes
[edit] External links
The Wiktionary entry for Ю
The 
