U

ISO basic Laitin alphabet Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

Cursive script 'u' and capital 'U' in the U.S. D'Nealian script style

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.

The 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]

In 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.

• 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

¹ An aa for encodins based on ASCII, includin the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 an Macintosh faimilies o encodins.

NATO phonetic	Morse code
Uniform	··–

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Seegnal banner	Banner semaphore	American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspellin)	Braille dots-136

• Media relatit tae U at Wikimedia Commons
• The dictionar defineetion o U at Wiktionary
• The dictionar defineetion o u at Wiktionary