Ŭ

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Ŭ or ŭ is a letter in the Belarusian language, when written in the 20th cent. form of the Belarusian Latin alphabet, and is also a letter in the Esperanto alphabet. The accent mark (diacritic) is known as a breve.

This letter should not be confused with u-caron, which is used to indicate u in the third tone of Chinese language pinyin. Compare Ǔ ǔ (caron) with Ŭ ŭ (breve).

Contents

[edit] Belarusian

The letter ŭ is called non-syllabic u (romanised: u nyeskladovaye) in Belarusian, because while resembling vowel u it doesn't form syllables. It represents a sonorant bilabial fricative consonant[1] in diphthongs such as aŭ, eŭ, oŭ; it is equivalent to IPA: [u̯]. Its Cyrillic counterpart is ў.

See also: Belarusian alphabet, Belarusian Latin alphabet.

[edit] Esperanto

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Ŭ also represents a semivowel in Esperanto orthography, which was devised in the late 19th century. As in Belarusian, Esperanto Ŭ is pronounced as a non-syllabic close back vowel (IPA: [u̯]) in the diphthongs aŭ and eŭ.

There is a hypothesis[citation needed] that the Esperanto letter was derived from Belarusian, which may be corroborated by the fact that the Cyrillic letter "Ў" (Cyrillic U with breve) was proposed by P.A. Bessonov in 1870[2]. It is of course also possible that Ŭ developed independently in both Esperanto and Belarusian.

In some Esperanto literature (usually humorous), the letter replaces the English w in onomatopoeia, as "ŭomp!" for "womp!"

[edit] Other uses

It is also a letter in some philological transcriptions of Latin, denoting a short U. The McCune-Reischauer Romanization of Korean uses "ŭ" to signify the close back unrounded vowel in 으. It is also used in ISO 15919 to transcribe the Malayalam language's samvṛtōkāram.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ E.g., per Беларуская мова: Вучэб. дапам. / Э. Д. Блінава, Н. В. Гаўрош, М. Ц. Кавалёва і інш.; Пад рэд. М. С. Яўневіча. — Мн. : Выш. школа, 1991. ISBN 5-339-00539-9.
  2. ^ Булыка (Bulyka). У нескладовае // Энцыклапедыя літаратуры і мастацтва Беларусі. Т.4. p.377.
The ISO basic Latin 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
Letter U with diacritics
ÚúÙùŬŭÛûǓǔŮůÜüǗǘǛǜǙǚǕǖŰűŨũṸṹŲųŪūṺṻỦủȔȕȖȗƯưỨứỪừỮữỬửỰựỤụṲṳṶṷṴṵɄʉᵾᶙ
Letters using breve sign
ĂăĔĕĞğĬĭŎŏŬŭ
es:Ŭ

eo:Ŭ nl:Ŭ ja:Ŭ pl:Ŭ pt:Ŭ zh:Ŭ

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