U
Encyclopedia : U : U : U : U
Ŭ or ŭ is a letter in the Belarusian language, when written in the Latin-based Łacinka 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).
Belarusian
The Belarusian language was normally written with the Latin alphabet (Łacinka), from the sixteenth to late nineteenth centuries. Its use has been slowly re-emerging since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The letter ŭ is called non-syllabic u (u nieskładovaje) in Belarusian, because by virtue of being a semivowel it cannot form syllables. It represents a high back semivowel in diphthongs such as aŭ, eŭ, oŭ. Its pronunciation is represented by [u̯] in IPA.When Belarusian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet, the same sound is written as ў.
External link: [Belarusian alphabet] at Omniglot.
Esperanto
| Esperanto topics |
|---|
| Esperanto | Grammar | | Phonology | Orthography | Vocabulary |
| History | Zamenhof | Proto-Esperanto | "Unua Libro" | Declaration of Boulogne | "Fundamento" | Prague Manifesto |
| and |
| Culture | Esperantist | Esperantujo | Film | Internacia Televido | La Espero | Libraries | Literature | Music | Native speakers | Pop culture references | | Symbols | Zamenhof Day |
| and services |
| Amikeca Reto | Esperanto Academy | Kurso de Esperanto | Encyclopedia | Pasporta Servo | Plouézec Meetings | TEJO | UEA | SAT | World Congress | Youth Congress |
| National Associations |
| Australia | Britain | British Youth | Canada | Taiwan | USA | Labour |
| Criticism |
| Esperantido | Propedeutic value | Reformed | Riism | Vs. Ido | Vs. Interlingua | Vs. Novial |
| Related topics |
| Auxiliary language | Constructed language | Ido | Interlingua | Novial | Volapük | Signuno | Anationalism |
| Wikimedia |
| [[Portal:Esperanto|Portal]] | [Vikipedio] | [eo] | [eo] | [Vikifonto] | [b] | [Vikikomunejo] | [Vikispecoj] |
A common hypothesis is that the Esperanto letter was derived from Belarusian, which can be inferred from these observations:
- Belarusian is the only natural language whose orthography contains this letter.
- The letter has the same pronunciation in the two languages.
- Esperanto's creator, Ludwik Zamenhof, was born in Białystok in the vicinity of Belarus.
- There is evidence that Zamenhof referred also to his native dialect when constructing Esperanto.
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.See also
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.
