 | Ŭ: Encyclopedia - Ŭ
Ŭ
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).
Ŭ - Belarusian
The Belarusian language was normally written with the Łacinka alphabet from the 16th to late 19th centuries. Its use has been slowly reemerging 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 can't form syllables. It represents a high back semivowel in diphthongs such as aŭ, eŭ, oŭ, and is represented by [u̯] in IPA.
When Belarusian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet, the same sound is written as Ў or ў.
Ĉ, Ĝ, Ĥ, Ĵ, Ŝ
Ŭ - Esperanto
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, in the diphthongs aŭ, eŭ, and is represented by [u̯] in the IPA.
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.
However, Zamenhof first used the Ŭ in 1887 in the Unua Libro, whereas the first attested use of Ŭ in Belarusian was in 1891 in a poetry collection by Francišak Benedykt Bahuševič. While it is possible that Ŭ was already in use in Belarusian before Bahuševič's poetry collection, another possibility is that the letter was borrowed into Łacinka from Esperanto, rather than the other way around. It is of course equally likely that the Ŭ developed independently in both Esperanto and Belarusian.
Ŭ - Other uses
It is also a letter in some philological transcriptions of Latin, denoting a short U, and the McCune-Reischauer Romanization of Korean uses "ŭ" to signify the vowel ㅡ.
See also
Other related archives1887, 1891, 19th century, Belarus, Belarusian language, Białystok, Chinese language, Cyrillic alphabet, Esperanto alphabet, Esperanto orthography, IPA, Korean, Latin, Ludwik Zamenhof, McCune-Reischauer, Soviet Union, breve, caron, close back vowel, diacritic, dialect, diphthongs, high back, pinyin, semivowel, short, syllabic, syllables, Ĉ, Ĝ, Ĥ, Ĵ, Łacinka alphabet, Ŝ, Ў
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Ŭ", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
