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Concept
U
Summary
U, or u, is the twenty-first and sixth-to-last letter and fifth vowel letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages, and others worldwide. Its name in English is u (pronounced 'juː), plural ues.
U derives from the Semitic waw, as does F, and later, Y, W, and V. Its oldest ancestor goes to Egyptian hieroglyphics, and is probably from a hieroglyph of a mace or fowl, representing the sound v or the sound w. This was borrowed to Phoenician, where it represented the sound w, and seldom the vowel u.
In Greek, two letters were adapted from the Phoenician waw. The letter was adapted, but split in two, with Digamma or wau being adapted to represent w, and the second one being Upsilon , which was originally adapted to represent u, later fronted, becoming y.
In Latin, a stemless variant shape of the upsilon was borrowed in early times as U, taking the form of modern-day V - either directly from the Western Greek alphabet or from the Etruscan alphabet as an intermediary - to represent the same u sound, as well as the consonantal w, num - originally spelled NVM - was pronounced num and via was pronounced ˈwia. From the 1st century AD on, depending on Vulgar Latin dialect, consonantal w developed into β (kept in Spanish), then later to v.
During the late Middle Ages, two minuscule forms developed, which were both used for v or the vowel u. The pointed form was written at the beginning of a word, while a rounded form was used in the middle or end, regardless of sound. So whereas 'valour' and 'excuse' appeared as in modern printing, 'have' and 'upon' were printed 'haue' and 'vpon', respectively. The first recorded use of and as distinct letters is in a Gothic alphabet from 1386, where preceded . Printers eschewed capital in favor of into the 17th century and the distinction between the two letters was not fully accepted by the French Academy until 1762. The rounded variant became the modern-day version of U and its former pointed form became V.
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