Yu (Cyrillic)

Not to be confused with the Korean hangul syllable 어 (eo) or the Cyrillic letter yus.

Yu or Ju (Ю ю; italics: Ю ю) is a letter of the Cyrillic script used in East Slavic and Bulgarian alphabets.

Yu
Usage
Writing system	Cyrillic
Type	Alphabetic
Sound values	[ju]
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.

Yu, from the Alphabet Book оf the Red Army Soldier (1921)

In English, Yu is commonly romanized as ⟨yu⟩ or ⟨ju⟩. In turn, ⟨ю⟩ is used, where available, in transcriptions of English letter ⟨u⟩ (in open syllables), and also of the ⟨ew⟩ digraph. The sound [y], like ⟨u⟩ in French and ⟨ü⟩ in German, may also be approximated by the letter ⟨ю⟩.

Pronunciation

Sometimes, it is referred to as "Iotated U" because it is a so-called iotated vowel, pronounced in isolation as /ju/, like the pronunciation of ⟨u⟩ in "human". After a consonant, no distinct [j] sound is pronounced, but the consonant is softened. The exact pronunciation of the vowel sound of ⟨ю⟩ in Slavic languages depends also on the succeeding sound. Before a soft consonant, it is [ʉ], the close central rounded vowel, as in 'rude'. Before a hard consonant or at the end of a word, the result is a back vowel [u], as in "pool".

History

Apart from the form I-O, in early Slavonic manuscripts the letter appears also in a mirrored form O-I (Ꙕ, ꙕ).^[1] It is the latter form that is probably the original,^{[citation needed]} 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, it denoted the close front rounded vowel /y/ in educated Greek speech. The close front rounded vowel does not appear in East Slavic. See above.

There was another way for it to lead to the modern form. By the analogy to several 'iotated' letters Ѥ, Ꙗ, Ѩ and Ѭ, the ancient ligature (or letter) Uk ⟨оѵ⟩/⟨оу⟩ possibly had its iotated form ⟨іоѵ⟩/⟨іоу⟩.^{[citation needed]}

The iotated big Yus ⟨Ѭ⟩ merged itself to ⟨ю⟩ in East Slavic languages.^{[citation needed]}

⟨Ю⟩ is the Voice Quality Symbol for tracheo-œsophageal speech (the symbol attempts to capture iconically the dual nature of the airstream).

Related letters and other similar characters

• У у : Cyrillic letter U
• Ү ү : Cyrillic letter Ue
• Û û : Latin letter U with circumflex
• Ū ū : Latin letter U with macron
• Ǔ ǔ : Latin letter U with caron

Computing codes

Character information

Preview	Ю		ю		Ꙕ		ꙕ
Unicode name	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YU		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YU		CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER REVERSED YU		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER REVERSED YU
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	1070	U+042E	1102	U+044E	42580	U+A654	42581	U+A655
UTF-8	208 174	D0 AE	209 142	D1 8E	234 153 148	EA 99 94	234 153 149	EA 99 95
Numeric character reference	Ю	Ю	ю	ю	Ꙕ	Ꙕ	ꙕ	ꙕ
Named character reference	Ю		ю
KOI8-R and KOI8-U	224	E0	192	C0
Code page 855	157	9D	156	9C
Windows-1251	222	DE	254	FE
ISO-8859-5	206	CE	238	EE
Macintosh Cyrillic	158	9E	254	FE