1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/U
U The twenty-first letter of the English alphabet. It is a
modification made in manuscript writing of the Latin
inscriptional V, and is itself found on the inscriptions
of Rome as early as the latter part of the 2nd
century A.D. The symbols U, V, Y are all of the same origin,
but what the origin is has been much disputed. In the Phoenician
alphabet T is the last symbol, but there can be little doubt that
when the Greeks introduced symbols for vowels, which had not
been indicated in the alphabet they had borrowed, they took the
sixth symbol of the Phoenician alphabet (see F) in its ordinary
form
and placed it at the end of the alphabet with the value
of a vowel. This vowel was apparently u (English oo in moon),
though Ionic and Attic Greek at a very early period changed
it to the sound of the French u. In other dialects the earlier
value long persisted, and in modern Tzakonian, the representative
of the ancient Laconian, it still survives. In some places,
e.g. Boeotia, the sound seems to have changed, in connexion
with dental consonants, in the same way as the English sound,
in certain cases i̯ (y) being inserted in front of it. This seems
to be the only feasible explanation of such spellings as τιούχα
(τύχη), πολιούξενος (πολύξενος), which appear after the Boeotians
adopted the Ionic alphabet. A similar change must have
existed in very early Attic and Ionic to account for the change of
t before υ into s in σύ, “thou” for τύ; some authorities think it
was universal in the earliest Greek. Greek nowhere shows the
symbol in the bowl shape that it has in the Semitic alphabet.
From the 7th century B.C. both Y and V are found, sometimes
both in the same area. Another form somewhat later has the
upper strokes curved outwards Υ, while the angle is much less
deep than in the other forms. It is noticeable that the symbol for
u in the syllabary which was used to write Greek in Cyprus has
this form amongst others. The name of the sixth symbol in the
Phoenician alphabet was Wāw (Vau), but though U has taken its
form, in Greek its name was ῦ (i.e. English oo, as in moon, except
in Attic and Ionic, where it was like the French u in lune), not
upsilon, as is frequently stated. In Sweet's terminology u (oo),
as pronounced in English “put” or “too,” is a high back wide
round, while the sound in the French sou or the Scotch pronunciation
of “ book ” is a high back narrow round. The high
front corresponding sound is found in the French lune. With
this the German “modified u” (ü) is often equated, but it is
not really identical, being a mid front narrow round vowel.
The pitch of the vowel u is among the lowest of the vowel sounds;
the rounding and protrusion of the lips make the breath passage
longer than it is for other vowels, and so its production may be
compared to that of a sound made upon a flute when all the
finger-holes are covered. In modern English ū preceded by i̯
(y) arises from three different sounds in middle English: (a) the
long French u (ü) brought in with borrowed words from French
(duke), (b) ēu (Early English ēow) as in “new,” (c) a more
open sound ēu (Early English ēaw) as in “dew” (Sweet, New
English Grammar, § 806). The y-sound was dropped after r, ch
and dzh, as in “true,” “choose,” “juice” (ibid., § 857). In the
literary dialect also it generally disappears after l, as in “lurid,”
“lute.” In some provincial and American pronunciations it is
dropped everywhere except initially, so that “Tuesday” is
pronounced Toosday, “new” noo. (P. Gi.)