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U (?, ?) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet
Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic alphabet is a family of alphabets, subsets of which are used by five Slavic languages national languages as well as non-Slavic . It is also used by many other languages of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Siberia and other languages in the past....
, representing the vowel after non-palatalized (hard) consonants.

In some languages variations of this letter are used:

with macron
Macron

A macron, from Greek language meaning "long", is a diacritic ? placed over or under a vowel which was originally used to mark a Long syllable#Syllable weight in classical poetry in Meter #Greek and Latin, but has now been taken also to indicate that the vowel is long vowel....
 (in Tajik
Tajik language

The Tajik language, or Tajik Persian, or Tajiki, is a modern variety of the Persian language spoken in Central Asia. An Indo-European languages language of the Iranian languages language group, most speakers of Tajik live in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan....
) with diaeresis
Diaeresis

In linguistics, diaeresis, or dieresis, is the pronunciation of two adjacent vowels in two separate syllables rather than as a diphthong, and it is also the name of the diacritic mark used to prompt the reader to pronounce adjacent vowels in this manner....
 (in Altai (Oyrot), Khakas
Khakas language

Khakas is a Turkic languages spoken by the Khakas people, who mainly live in the southern Siberian Khakas Republic, or Khakassia, in Russia. The Khakas number 78,500, of whom 60,168 speak the Khakas language; most people are bilingual in Russian language ....
, Gagauz
Gagauz language

The Gagauz language is a Turkic language, spoken by the Gagauz people, and the official language of Gagauzia, Republic of Moldova. It is spoken by approximately 150,000 people....
, Khanty
Khanty language

Khanty or Xanty language, also known as the Ostyak language, is a language of the Khant peoples. It is spoken in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug okrugs, as well as in Aleksandrovsky District, Tomsk Oblast and Kargosoksky District, Tomsk Oblast districts of Tomsk Oblast in Russia....
, Mari
Mari language

The Mari language , spoken by more than 600,000 people, belongs to the Finno-Ugric languages branch of the Uralic languages language family. It is spoken primarily in the Mari El of the Russian Federation as well as in the area along the Vyatka River river basin and eastwards to the Ural Mountains....
) with double acute accent
Double acute accent

The double acute accent is a diacritic mark of the Latin script used primarily in Hungarian alphabet. Consequently, it is sometimes referred to as Hungarumlaut or Hungarian umlaut, although it is more similar to a trema or diaresis than an umlaut....
 (in Chuvash
Chuvash language

Chuvash ) is a Turkic language spoken in central Russia, primarily in the Republic of Chuvashia and adjacent areas. It is the only surviving member of the Oghur branch of Turkic languages....
)

History
Historically, this letter evolved as a specifically East Slavic
Old East Slavic language

Old East Slavic, also known as Old Russian or Old Ruthenian, was a vernacular literary language used from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries by East Slavs in Kievan Rus' and states which formed after its collapse....
 short form of the digraph ??
Uk (Cyrillic)

Uk is a letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet. It was originally a digraph of O and U or less frequently Izhitsa, a letterform called digraph uk....
 used in ancient Slavic
Old Church Slavonic

Old Church Slavonic, also known as Old Bulgarian, or Old Macedonian, was the first literary Slavic language, based on the old Solun dialect of the Thessaloniki region by the 9th century Byzantine Greeks missionaries, Saints Cyril and Methodius, who used it for translation of the Bible and other Ancient Greek language ecclesiastica...
 texts to represent .






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U (?, ?) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet
Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic alphabet is a family of alphabets, subsets of which are used by five Slavic languages national languages as well as non-Slavic . It is also used by many other languages of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Siberia and other languages in the past....
, representing the vowel after non-palatalized (hard) consonants.

In some languages variations of this letter are used:

  • ?
    Short U

    Short U is a letter of the Belarusian language Cyrillic alphabet. The letter is called non-syllabic u or short u in Belarusian, because while resembling the vowel ? it does not form syllables....
     with breve
    Breve

    A breve is a diacritical mark ?, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. It looks similar to caron , but the caron has a sharp tip, whilst the breve is rounded....
     (in Belarusian
    Belarusian language

    The Belarusian language, or Belorussian is the language of the Belarusians and is spoken in Belarus and abroad, chiefly in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland....
    , Dungan
    Dungan language

    The Dungan language is a Spoken Chinese spoken by the Dungan people of Central Asia, an ethnic group related to the Hui people of China....
    , Siberian Eskimo (Yuit), Uzbek
    Uzbek language

    Uzbek is a Turkic languages and the official language of Uzbekistan. It has about 23.5 million native speakers, and it is spoken by the Uzbeks in Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia....
    )
with macron
Macron

A macron, from Greek language meaning "long", is a diacritic ? placed over or under a vowel which was originally used to mark a Long syllable#Syllable weight in classical poetry in Meter #Greek and Latin, but has now been taken also to indicate that the vowel is long vowel....
 (in Tajik
Tajik language

The Tajik language, or Tajik Persian, or Tajiki, is a modern variety of the Persian language spoken in Central Asia. An Indo-European languages language of the Iranian languages language group, most speakers of Tajik live in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan....
) with diaeresis
Diaeresis

In linguistics, diaeresis, or dieresis, is the pronunciation of two adjacent vowels in two separate syllables rather than as a diphthong, and it is also the name of the diacritic mark used to prompt the reader to pronounce adjacent vowels in this manner....
 (in Altai (Oyrot), Khakas
Khakas language

Khakas is a Turkic languages spoken by the Khakas people, who mainly live in the southern Siberian Khakas Republic, or Khakassia, in Russia. The Khakas number 78,500, of whom 60,168 speak the Khakas language; most people are bilingual in Russian language ....
, Gagauz
Gagauz language

The Gagauz language is a Turkic language, spoken by the Gagauz people, and the official language of Gagauzia, Republic of Moldova. It is spoken by approximately 150,000 people....
, Khanty
Khanty language

Khanty or Xanty language, also known as the Ostyak language, is a language of the Khant peoples. It is spoken in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug okrugs, as well as in Aleksandrovsky District, Tomsk Oblast and Kargosoksky District, Tomsk Oblast districts of Tomsk Oblast in Russia....
, Mari
Mari language

The Mari language , spoken by more than 600,000 people, belongs to the Finno-Ugric languages branch of the Uralic languages language family. It is spoken primarily in the Mari El of the Russian Federation as well as in the area along the Vyatka River river basin and eastwards to the Ural Mountains....
) with double acute accent
Double acute accent

The double acute accent is a diacritic mark of the Latin script used primarily in Hungarian alphabet. Consequently, it is sometimes referred to as Hungarumlaut or Hungarian umlaut, although it is more similar to a trema or diaresis than an umlaut....
 (in Chuvash
Chuvash language

Chuvash ) is a Turkic language spoken in central Russia, primarily in the Republic of Chuvashia and adjacent areas. It is the only surviving member of the Oghur branch of Turkic languages....
)
  • straight
    Ue (Cyrillic)

    The Cyrillic letter Straight U is a form of the Cyrillic letter U with a straight, rather than diagonal, center line. It is used to represent the close front rounded vowel ....
     (in Mongolian
    Mongolian language

    The Mongolian language is the best-known member of the Mongolic languages. It is the language of most residents of Mongolia and of many of the Mongolian residents of Inner Mongolia, totalling about 5.7 million speakers....
    , Kazakh
    Kazakh language

    Kazakh is a Turkic languages language closely related to Nogai language and Karakalpak language.Kazakh is an agglutinative language, and it employs vowel harmony....
    , Tatar
    Tatar language

    The Tatar language is a Turkic languages language spoken by the Tatars....
    , Bashkir
    Bashkir language

    The Bashkir language is a Turkic languages....
    , Dungan
    Dungan language

    The Dungan language is a Spoken Chinese spoken by the Dungan people of Central Asia, an ethnic group related to the Hui people of China....
     and other languages)
  • straight
    Kazakh Short U

    The Cyrillic alphabet letter Straight U with stroke is a Ue Cyrillic alphabet U with a horizontal line through it. It is used in Kazakh language to represent the close back rounded vowel or the Near-close near-back rounded vowel ....
     with bar
    Bar (diacritic)

    A bar or stroke is a modification consisting of a line drawn through a grapheme. It may be used as a diacritic to derive new letters from old ones, or simply as an addition to make a grapheme more distinct from others....
     (in Kazakh
    Kazakh language

    Kazakh is a Turkic languages language closely related to Nogai language and Karakalpak language.Kazakh is an agglutinative language, and it employs vowel harmony....
    )


History


Historically, this letter evolved as a specifically East Slavic
Old East Slavic language

Old East Slavic, also known as Old Russian or Old Ruthenian, was a vernacular literary language used from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries by East Slavs in Kievan Rus' and states which formed after its collapse....
 short form of the digraph ??
Uk (Cyrillic)

Uk is a letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet. It was originally a digraph of O and U or less frequently Izhitsa, a letterform called digraph uk....
 used in ancient Slavic
Old Church Slavonic

Old Church Slavonic, also known as Old Bulgarian, or Old Macedonian, was the first literary Slavic language, based on the old Solun dialect of the Thessaloniki region by the 9th century Byzantine Greeks missionaries, Saints Cyril and Methodius, who used it for translation of the Bible and other Ancient Greek language ecclesiastica...
 texts to represent . The digraph was itself a direct loan from the Greek alphabet
Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th century BC or early 8th century BCE....
, where the combination ??
Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th century BC or early 8th century BCE....
 (omicron
Omicron

Omicron is the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 70. It is rarely used in mathematics because it is indistinguishable from the Latin alphabet letter O and easily confused with the Numerical digit 0 ....
-upsilon
Upsilon

Upsilon is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 400. It is derived from the phoenecian alphabet Waw ....
) was also used to represent .

Consequently, the form of the letter is derived from Greek upsilon
Upsilon

Upsilon is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 400. It is derived from the phoenecian alphabet Waw ....
, which was parallelly also taken over into the Cyrillic alphabet in another form, as izhitsa
Izhitsa

Izhitsa is a letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet. It was used to represent upsilon in words derived from Greek language, such as ????? . However, because it made the same sound /i/ as the normal letter ?, it was considered superfluous....
 . (The letter izhitsa was removed from the Russian alphabet
Russian alphabet

The modern Russian alphabet is a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet. It was introduced into Kievan Rus' at the time of Vladimir I of Kiev's conversion to Christianity date....
 in the orthography reform of 1917/19
Russian alphabet

The modern Russian alphabet is a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet. It was introduced into Kievan Rus' at the time of Vladimir I of Kiev's conversion to Christianity date....
.)

See also

  • ?, ? - Belarusian Cyrillic Short U
    Short U

    Short U is a letter of the Belarusian language Cyrillic alphabet. The letter is called non-syllabic u or short u in Belarusian, because while resembling the vowel ? it does not form syllables....
  • U, u - Latin
    U

    U is the twenty-first letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled u ....
  • Y, y - Latin
    Y

    The letter Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled wye or occasionally wy' , plural wyes....
  • ?, ? - Upsilon (Greek)
    Upsilon

    Upsilon is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 400. It is derived from the phoenecian alphabet Waw ....


Footnotes