Jump to content

Ü

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.
For the region in Tibet, see Ü (region).
Not to be confused with Ű or Ȕ.
"U-umlaut" redirects here. For the sound change, see U-mutation.
U with umlaut/diaeresis
Ü ü
V, UE, II
Usage
Writing systemLatin script
Typealphabetic
Sound values
[ɨ]
History
Development
UE
  • Uͤ uͤ
    • Ü ü
VariationsV, UE, II
Other
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Ü (lowercase ü) is a Latin script character composed of the letter U and the diaeresis diacritical mark. In some alphabets such as those of a number of Romance languages or Guarani it denotes an instance of regular U to be construed in isolation from adjacent characters with which it would usually form a larger unit; other alphabets like the Azerbaijani, Estonian, German, Hungarian and Turkish ones treat it as a letter in its own right. In those cases it typically represents a close front rounded vowel [y] ⓘ.

Although not a part of their alphabet, Ü also appears in languages such as Finnish and Swedish when retained in foreign proper names like München ("Munich"). A small number of Dutch and Afrikaans words employ the character to mark vowel hiatus (e.g. reünie /reːyˈni/ ("reunion"), a loanword marked with diaeresis to suppress the native reading of eu as a digraph pronounced /øː/).

U-umlaut

A glyph, U with umlaut, appears in the German alphabet. It represents the umlauted form of u, which results in [yː] when long and [ʏ] when short. The letter is collated together with U, or as UE. In languages that have adopted German names or spellings, such as Swedish, the letter also occurs. It is however not a part of these languages' alphabets. In Swedish the letter is called tyskt y which means German y.

Though not a part of the Slovene alphabet, ü is often used in eastern Styrian dialects, especially around Ptuj[1] as well as in the Resian dialect with the same pronouncation as in German.

In other languages that do not have the letter as part of the regular alphabet or in limited character sets such as ASCII, U-umlaut is frequently replaced with the two-letter combination "ue". Software for optical character recognition sometimes sees it falsely as ii.

Letter Ü

The letter Ü is present in the Hungarian, Turkish, Uyghur Latin, Estonian, Azeri, Turkmen, Crimean Tatar, Kazakh Latin and Tatar Latin alphabets, where it represents a close front rounded vowel [y]. It is considered a distinct letter, collated separately, not a simple modification of U or Y, and is distinct from UE.

Wayuu represents the close central unrounded vowel [ɨ] using this letter.

In the Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish alphabets ü is alphabetized as y.

It is not present in the Basque alphabet but the Souletin dialect uses it for [y].

This same letter appears in the Chinese Romanisations Pinyin, Wade–Giles, and the German-based Lessing-Othmer, where it represents the same sound [y]: 綠/lǜ (green) or 女/nǚ (female). Standard Mandarin Chinese pronunciation has both the sounds [y] and [u]. Pinyin only uses "Ü" to represent [y] after the letters "L" or "N" to avoid confusion with words such as 路/lù (road) and 怒/nù (anger). Words such as 玉/yù (jade) or 句/jù (sentence) are pronounced with [y], but are not spelled with "Ü", although Wade–Giles and Lessing use "Ü" in all situations. As the letter "Ü" is missing on most keyboards and the letter "V" is not present in standard Mandarin pinyin, the letter "V" is used on most computer Chinese input methods to enter the letter "Ü". As a result, romanisation of Chinese with the letter "V" representing the Ü sound is sometimes found. However, Ü sound should be officially represented by "yu" in Pinyin when it is difficult to enter Ü. For example, the surname Lü (吕) would be written as "Lyu" in passports.[2] Four extra tones for the letter "ü", which are "ǖ, ǘ, ǚ, ǜ", is added in Unicode as per GB/T 2312.

U-diaeresis

Several languages use diaeresis over the letter U to show that the letter is pronounced in its regular way, without dropping out or building diphthongs with neighbouring letters.

In Catalan, ü is used in the letter combinations güe, güi, qüe and qüi to indicate the pronunciation [ɡwe], [ɡwi], [kwe] or [kwi], respectively (e.g. nicaragüenc, pingüins, qüestió, aqüicultura); this contrasts with the combinations gue/gui/que/qui, in which the u is silent ([ɡe], [ɡi], [ke], [ki]). Catalan also uses the letter ü to indicate that a vowel pair that would normally form a diphthong must be pronounced as separate syllables (e.g. baül, diürna).

Similarly, in Spanish, ü is used in the combinations güe [ɡwe] and güi [ɡwi], to distinguish them from "gue" [ɡe] and "gui" [ɡi] (e.g. nicaragüense, pingüinos). Unlike Catalan, though, Spanish does not use it after q, instead using cue and cui to spell words with [kwe] or [kwi] sounds (cuestión, acuicultura); it also does not use it to break diphthongs, sometimes using the letter ú for that purpose when necessary (baúl, but diurna).

In French, the diaeresis appears over the "u" only very rarely, in some uncommon words, capharnaüm [-aɔm] ('shambles'), Capharnaüm/Capernaüm [-aɔm] or Emmaüs [-ays]. After the 1990 spelling reforms, it is applied to a few more words, like aigüe (formerly aiguë), ambigüe (formerly ambiguë) and argüer [aʁɡɥe] (formerly without the diaeresis).

Usage in phonetic alphabets

In the Rheinische Dokumenta, a phonetic alphabet for many West Central German, Low Rhenish, and related vernacular languages, "ü" represents a range from [y] to [ʏ].

Typography

Johann Martin Schleyer proposed alternate forms for Ü and ü (Ꞟ and ꞟ, respectively) in Volapük but they were rarely used.

Historically the unique letter Ü and U-diaeresis were written as a U with two dots above the letter.

U-umlaut was written as a U with a small e written above (Uͤ uͤ): this minute e degenerated to two vertical bars in medieval handwritings. In most later handwritings these bars in turn nearly became dots.

In modern typography there was insufficient space on typewriters and later computer keyboards to allow for both a U-with-dots (also representing Ü) and a U-with-bars. Since they looked near-identical the two glyphs were combined, which was also done in computer character encodings such as ISO 8859-1. As a result, there was no way to differentiate between the three different characters. While the distinction can be recreated in modern Unicode using combining diacritics, modern typographic standards do not recommend doing so. In the Hungarian alphabet, double acute U (Ű) is a distinct letter representing a long Ü.

Computing codes

Character information
Preview Ü ü
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS
Encodings decimal hex dec hex
Unicode 220 U+00DC 252 U+00FC
UTF-8 195 156 C3 9C 195 188 C3 BC
GB 18030 129 48 137 53 81 30 89 35 168 185 A8 B9
Numeric character reference Ü Ü ü ü
Named character reference Ü ü
EBCDIC family 252 FC 220 DC
ISO 8859-1/2/3/4/9/10/14/15/16 220 DC 252 FC
CP437 154 9A 129 81
Code page 10029 134 86 159 9F
GB/T 2312, GBK, GB 18030 168 185 A8 B9
HKSCS 136 162 88 A2

Tonal marks for Hanyu Pinyin

Character information
Preview Ǖ ǖ Ǘ ǘ Ǚ ǚ Ǜ ǜ
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS AND MACRON LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS AND MACRON LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS AND ACUTE LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS AND ACUTE LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS AND CARON LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS AND CARON LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS AND GRAVE LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS AND GRAVE
Encodings decimal hex dec hex dec hex dec hex dec hex dec hex dec hex dec hex
Unicode 469 U+01D5 470 U+01D6 471 U+01D7 472 U+01D8 473 U+01D9 474 U+01DA 475 U+01DB 476 U+01DC
UTF-8 199 149 C7 95 199 150 C7 96 199 151 C7 97 199 152 C7 98 199 153 C7 99 199 154 C7 9A 199 155 C7 9B 199 156 C7 9C
GB 18030 129 48 159 57 81 30 9F 39 168 181 A8 B5 129 48 160 48 81 30 A0 30 168 182 A8 B6 129 48 160 49 81 30 A0 31 168 183 A8 B7 129 48 160 50 81 30 A0 32 168 184 A8 B8
Numeric character reference Ǖ Ǖ ǖ ǖ Ǘ Ǘ ǘ ǘ Ǚ Ǚ ǚ ǚ Ǜ Ǜ ǜ ǜ
GB/T 2312, GBK, GB 18030 168 181 A8 B5 168 182 A8 B6 168 183 A8 B7 168 184 A8 B8
HKSCS 136 124 88 7C 136 125 88 7D 136 126 88 7E 136 161 88 A1
Character information
Preview ᴞ
Unicode name LATIN SMALL LETTER SIDEWAYS DIAERESIZED U
Encodings decimal hex
Unicode 7454 U+1D1E
UTF-8 225 180 158 E1 B4 9E
GB 18030 129 53 215 56 81 35 D7 38
Numeric character reference ᴞ ᴞ

Keyboarding

The methods available for entering ⟨Ü⟩ and ⟨ü⟩ from the keyboard depend on the operating system, the keyboard layout, and the application.

  • Microsoft Windows – some keyboard layouts feature separate keys for ⟨Ü⟩
    • Using the Swiss French keyboard, ⟨ü⟩ can be entered by typing ⇧ Shift+È
    • Using the US International layout, ⟨ü⟩ can be entered by typing AltGR+Y
  • Microsoft Windows: with the Number Lock on, hold down the Alt key while typing on the numeric keypad the decimal value of the code point from the active DOS/OEM code page without a leading zero, then release the Alt key; i.e. Alt+1+5+4 for ⟨Ü⟩ and Alt+1+2+9 for ⟨ü⟩
  • Microsoft Windows: with the Number Lock on, hold down the Alt key while typing on the numeric keypad the decimal value of the code point from the active ANSI code page with a leading zero, then release the Alt key; i.e. Alt+0+2+2+0 for ⟨Ü⟩ and Alt+0+2+5+2 for ⟨ü⟩
  • Microsoft Word for Windows: type Ctrl+: followed by ⇧ Shift+U for ⟨Ü⟩ or Ctrl+: then U for ⟨ü⟩
  • macOS with an English keyboard layout (Australian, British, or U.S.): type ⌥ Option+U followed by ⇧ Shift+U for ⟨Ü⟩ or ⌥ Option+U and then U for ⟨ü⟩ or by keeping the U key pressed and then typing 2
  • In Linux-based operating systems, this symbol may be typed by pressing the Compose key followed by u, ".
  • In GTK-based GUI-Applications, Ctrl+⇧ Shift+U followed by the Hex-Code

See also

References

  1. ^ "About Lük - Ptujski Lük".
  2. ^ 新版护照“吕”姓改拼“LYU” 英文无ü被替代. Beijing Daily. 2012-10-11.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ü&oldid=1241266411"