U with umlaut/diaresis
Ü ü
V, UE, II
Usage
Writing systemLatin script
Typealphabetic
Phonetic usage
[ɨ]
History
Development
UE
  • Uͤ uͤ
    • Ü ü
VariationsV, UE, II
Other

Ü (lowercase ü) is a Latin script character composed of the letter U and the diaeresis diacritical mark. In some alphabets such as those of a number of Romance languages or Guarani it denotes an instance of regular U to be construed in isolation from adjacent characters with which it would usually form a larger unit; other alphabets like the Azerbaijani, Estonian, German, Hungarian and Turkish ones treat it as a letter in its own right. In those cases it typically represents a close front rounded vowel [y] ⓘ.

Although not a part of their alphabet, Ü also appears in languages such as Finnish and Swedish when retained in foreign proper names like München ("Munich"). A small number of Dutch and Afrikaans words employ the character to mark vowel hiatus (e.g. reünie /reːyˈni/ ("reunion"), a loanword marked with diaeresis to suppress the native reading of eu as a digraph pronounced /øː/).

U-umlaut

A glyph, U with umlaut, appears in the German alphabet. It represents the umlauted form of u, which results in [yː] when long and [ʏ] when short. The letter is collated together with U, or as UE. In languages that have adopted German names or spellings, such as Swedish, the letter also occurs. It is however not a part of these languages' alphabets. In Swedish the letter is called tyskt y which means German y.

Though not a part of the Slovene alphabet, ü is often used in eastern Styrian dialects, especially around Ptuj[1] as well as in the Resian dialect with the same pronouncation as in German.

In other languages that do not have the letter as part of the regular alphabet or in limited character sets such as ASCII, U-umlaut is frequently replaced with the two-letter combination "ue". Software for optical character recognition sometimes sees it falsely as ii.

Letter Ü

The letter Ü is present in the Hungarian, Turkish, Uyghur Latin, Estonian, Azeri, Turkmen, Crimean Tatar, Kazakh Latin and Tatar Latin alphabets, where it represents a close front rounded vowel [y]. It is considered a distinct letter, collated separately, not a simple modification of U or Y, and is distinct from UE.

Wayuu represents the close central unrounded vowel [ɨ] using this letter.

In the Swedish and Finnish alphabets ü is alphabetized as y.

It is not present in the Basque alphabet but the Souletin dialect uses it for [y].

This same letter appears in the Chinese Romanisations Pinyin, Wade–Giles, and the German-based Lessing-Othmer, where it represents the same sound [y]: 綠/lǜ (green) or 女/nǚ (female). Standard Mandarin Chinese pronunciation has both the sounds [y] and [u]. Pinyin only uses "Ü" to represent [y] after the letters "L" or "N" to avoid confusion with words such as 路/lù (road) and 怒/nù (anger). Words such as 玉/yù (jade) or 句/jù (sentence) are pronounced with [y], but are not spelled with "Ü", although Wade–Giles and Lessing use "Ü" in all situations. As the letter "Ü" is missing on most keyboards and the letter "V" is not present in standard Mandarin pinyin, the letter "V" is used on most computer Chinese input methods to enter the letter "Ü". As a result, romanisation of Chinese with the letter "V" representing the Ü sound is sometimes found. However, Ü sound should be officially represented by "yu" in Pinyin when it is difficult to enter Ü. For example, the surname Lü (吕) would be written as "Lyu" in passports.[2] Four extra tones for the letter "ü", which are "ǖ, ǘ, ǚ, ǜ", is added in Unicode as per GB/T 2312.

U-diaeresis

Several languages use diaeresis over the letter U to show that the letter is pronounced in its regular way, without dropping out or building diphthongs with neighbouring letters.

In Spanish, it is used to distinguish between "gue"/"güe" [ɡe]/[ɡwe] and "gui"/"güi" [ɡi]/[ɡwi]: nicaragüense ("Nicaraguan"), pingüino ("penguin").

Similarly in Catalan, "gue~güe" are [ɡe]~[ɡwe], "gui~güi" are [ɡi]~[ɡwi], "que~qüe" are [ke]~[kwe] and "qui~qüi" are [ki]~[kwi], as in aigües, pingüins, qüestió, adeqüi. Also, ü is used to mark that vowel pairs that normally would form a diphthong must be pronounced as separate syllables, examples: Raül, diürn.

In French, the diaeresis appears over the "u" only very rarely, in some uncommon words, capharnaüm [-aɔm] ('shambles'), Capharnaüm/Capernaüm [-aɔm] or Emmaüs [-ays]. After the 1990 spelling reforms, it is applied to a few more words, like aigüe (formerly aiguë), ambigüe (formerly ambiguë) and argüer [aʁɡɥe] (formerly without the diaeresis).

Usage in phonetic alphabets

In the Rheinische Dokumenta, a phonetic alphabet for many West Central German, Low Rhenish, and related vernacular languages, "ü" represents a range from [y] to [ʏ].

Typography

Johann Martin Schleyer proposed alternate forms for Ü and ü (Ꞟ and ꞟ, respectively) in Volapük but they were rarely used.

Historically the unique letter Ü and U-diaeresis were written as a U with two dots above the letter.

U-umlaut was written as a U with a small e written above (Uͤ uͤ): this minute e degenerated to two vertical bars in medieval handwritings. In most later handwritings these bars in turn nearly became dots.

In modern typography there was insufficient space on typewriters and later computer keyboards to allow for both a U-with-dots (also representing Ü) and a U-with-bars. Since they looked near-identical the two glyphs were combined, which was also done in computer character encodings such as ISO 8859-1. As a result, there was no way to differentiate between the three different characters. While the distinction can be recreated in modern Unicode using combining diacritics, modern typographic standards do not recommend doing so. In the Hungarian alphabet, double acute U (Ű) is a distinct letter representing a long Ü.

Computing codes

Character information
PreviewÜü
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS
Encodingsdecimalhexdechex
Unicode220U+00DC252U+00FC
UTF-8195 156C3 9C195 188C3 BC
GB 18030129 48 137 5381 30 89 35168 185A8 B9
Numeric character referenceÜÜüü
Named character referenceÜü
EBCDIC family252FC220DC
ISO 8859-1/2/3/4/9/10/14/15/16220DC252FC
CP4371549A12981
Code page 10029134861599F
GB/T 2312, GBK, GB 18030168 185A8 B9
HKSCS136 16288 A2

Tonal marks for Hanyu Pinyin

Character information
PreviewǕǖǗǘǙǚǛǜ
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS AND MACRON LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS AND MACRON LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS AND ACUTE LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS AND ACUTE LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS AND CARON LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS AND CARON LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS AND GRAVE LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS AND GRAVE
Encodingsdecimalhexdechexdechexdechexdechexdechexdechexdechex
Unicode469U+01D5470U+01D6471U+01D7472U+01D8473U+01D9474U+01DA475U+01DB476U+01DC
UTF-8199 149C7 95199 150C7 96199 151C7 97199 152C7 98199 153C7 99199 154C7 9A199 155C7 9B199 156C7 9C
GB 18030129 48 159 5781 30 9F 39168 181A8 B5129 48 160 4881 30 A0 30168 182A8 B6129 48 160 4981 30 A0 31168 183A8 B7129 48 160 5081 30 A0 32168 184A8 B8
Numeric character referenceǕǕǖǖǗǗǘǘǙǙǚǚǛǛǜǜ
GB/T 2312, GBK, GB 18030168 181A8 B5168 182A8 B6168 183A8 B7168 184A8 B8
HKSCS136 12488 7C136 12588 7D136 12688 7E136 16188 A1
Character information
Previewᴞ
Unicode name LATIN SMALL LETTER SIDEWAYS DIAERESIZED U
Encodingsdecimalhex
Unicode7454U+1D1E
UTF-8225 180 158E1 B4 9E
GB 18030129 53 215 5681 35 D7 38
Numeric character referenceᴞᴞ

Keyboarding

The methods available for entering ⟨Ü⟩ and ⟨ü⟩ from the keyboard depend on the operating system, the keyboard layout, and the application.

  • Microsoft Windows – some keyboard layouts feature separate keys for ⟨Ü⟩
    • Using the Swiss French keyboard, ⟨ü⟩ can be entered by typing ⇧ Shift+È
    • Using the US International layout, ⟨ü⟩ can be entered by typing AltGR+Y
  • Microsoft Windows: with the Number Lock on, hold down the Alt key while typing on the numeric keypad the decimal value of the code point from the active DOS/OEM code page without a leading zero, then release the Alt key; i.e. Alt+1+5+4 for ⟨Ü⟩ and Alt+1+2+9 for ⟨ü⟩
  • Microsoft Windows: with the Number Lock on, hold down the Alt key while typing on the numeric keypad the decimal value of the code point from the active ANSI code page with a leading zero, then release the Alt key; i.e. Alt+0+2+2+0 for ⟨Ü⟩ and Alt+0+2+5+2 for ⟨ü⟩
  • Microsoft Word for Windows: type Ctrl+: followed by ⇧ Shift+U for ⟨Ü⟩ or Ctrl+: then U for ⟨ü⟩
  • macOS with an English keyboard layout (Australian, British, or U.S.): type ⌥ Option+U followed by ⇧ Shift+U for ⟨Ü⟩ or ⌥ Option+U and then U for ⟨ü⟩ or by keeping the U key pressed and then typing 2
  • In Linux-based operating systems, this symbol may be typed by pressing the Compose key followed by u, ".
  • In GTK-based GUI-Applications, Ctrl+⇧ Shift+U followed by the Hex-Code

See also

References

  1. ↑ "About Lük - Ptujski Lük".
  2. ↑ 新版护照“吕”姓改拼“LYU” 英文无ü被替代. Beijing Daily. 2012-10-11.
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