Yu (Cyrillic)

Not to be confused with Korean 어 - eo.

Cyrillic letter Yu
Unicode (hex)
majuscule: U+042E
minuscule: U+044E
Cyrillic script Slavic letters
А	Б	В	Г	Ґ	Д	Ђ
Ѓ	Е	Ѐ	Ё	Є	Ж	З
Ѕ	И	Ѝ	І	Ї	Й	Ј
К	Л	Љ	М	Н	Њ	О
П	Р	С	Т	Ћ	Ќ	У
Ў	Ф	Х	Ц	Ч	Џ	Ш
Щ	Ъ	Ы	Ь	Э	Ю	Я
Non-Slavic letters
Ӑ	Ӓ	Ә	Ӛ	Ӕ	Ғ	Ҕ
Ӻ	Ӷ	Ԁ	Ԃ	Ꚉ	Ӗ	Ӂ
Җ	Ӝ	Ԅ	Ҙ	Ӟ	Ԑ	Ӡ
Ԇ	Ӣ	Ҋ	Ӥ	Қ	Ӄ	Ҡ
Ҟ	Ҝ	Ԟ	Ԛ	Ӆ	Ԓ	Ԡ
Ԉ	Ԕ	Ӎ	Ӊ	Ң	Ӈ	Ҥ
Ԣ	Ԋ	Ӧ	Ө	Ӫ	Ҩ	Ԥ
Ҧ	Ҏ	Ԗ	Ҫ	Ԍ	Ҭ	Ԏ
Ӯ	Ӱ	Ӳ	Ү	Ұ	Ҳ	Ӽ
Ӿ	Һ	Ԧ	Ҵ	Ҷ	Ӵ	Ӌ
Ҹ	Ꚇ	Ҽ	Ҿ	Ӹ	Ҍ	Ӭ
Ԙ	Ԝ	Ӏ
Archaic letters
Ҁ	Ѻ	Ѹ	Ѡ	Ѿ	Ѣ	Ꙓ
Ꙗ	Ѥ	Ѧ	Ѫ	Ѩ	Ѭ	Ѯ
Ѱ	Ѳ	Ѵ	Ѷ	Ꙟ
List of Cyrillic letters
Cyrillic digraphs

Yu (Ю ю; italics: Ю ю) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. 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›.

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]}

Related letters and other similar characters

• У у : Cyrillic letter U

Computing codes

character	Ю		ю
Unicode name	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YU		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YU
character encoding	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	1070	042E	1102	044E
UTF-8	208 174	D0 AE	209 142	D1 8E
Numeric character reference	Ю	Ю	ю	ю
KOI8-R and KOI8-U	224	E0	192	C0
CP 855	157	9D	156	9C
Windows-1251	222	DE	254	FE
ISO-8859-5	206	CE	238	EE
Mac Cyrillic	158	9E	254	FE

External links

• The Wiktionary definition of Ю
• The Wiktionary definition of ю