U (kana)

u
Hiragana Katakana
Transliteration	u
Translit. with dakuten	vu
Hiragana origin	宇
Katakana origin	宇
Man'yōgana	宇 羽 于 有 卯 烏 得
Spelling kana	上野のウ (Ueno no "u")
Pronunciation

U (hiragana: う, katakana: ウ) is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora. In the modern Japanese system of alphabetical order, they occupy the third place in the modern Gojūon (五十音) system of collating kana. In the Iroha, they occupied the 24th position, between む and ゐ. In the Gojūon chart (ordered by columns, from right to left), う lies in the first column (あ行, "column A") and the third row (う段, "row U"). Both represent the sound [ɯ]. In the Ainu language, the small katakana ゥ represents a diphthong, and is written as w in the Latin alphabet.

Form	Rōmaji	Hiragana	Katakana
Normal a/i/u/e/o (あ行 a-gyō)	u	う	ウ
	uu ū	うう うー	ウウ ウー

Other additional forms
Form A (w-) Romaji Hiragana Katakana wa うぁ ウァ wi うぃ ウィ wu うぅ ウゥ we うぇ ウェ wo うぉ ウォ wya うゃ ウャ wyu うゅ ウュ wye うぃぇ ウィェ wyo うょ ウョ	Form B (v-) Romaji Hiragana Katakana va ゔぁ ヴァ vi, vyi ゔぃ ヴィ vu ゔ ヴ ve ゔぇ ヴェ vo ゔぉ ヴォ vya ゔゃ ヴャ vyu ゔゅ ヴュ vye ゔぃぇ ヴィェ vyo ゔょ ヴョ

Derivation

Both う and ウ originate, via man'yōgana, from the kanji 宇 (pronounced u and meaning space).

The katakana vu (ヴ), which is an u with a dakuten ("voiced mark"), along with va (ヷ), was first used by the educator Fukuzawa Yukichi for transcribing English in 1860^[1][2] in his English-Japanese dictionary, which featured such entry as Heaven(ヒーヴヌ) (Hīvunu), Venus(ヴェヌス) (Venusu), River(リーヷル) (Rīvaru), etc.^[3] It is intended to represent a voiced labiodental fricative [v] in foreign languages, but the actual pronunciation by Japanese speakers may be closer to a voiced bilabial fricative [β] (see Japanese phonology § Voiced bilabial fricative).

Variant forms

Scaled-down versions of the characters (ぅ, ゥ) are used to create new morae that do not exist in the Japanese language, such as トゥ (tu). This convention is relatively new, and many older loanwords do not use it. For example, in the phrase Tutankhamun's cartouche, the recent loan cartouche uses the new phonetic technique, but the older loan Tutankhamun uses ツ (tsu) as an approximation:

ツタンカーメン の カルトゥーシュ
Tsutankāmen no karutūshu

The character う is also used, in its full-sized form, to lengthen "o" sounds. For example, the word 構想 is written in hiragana as こうそう (kousou), pronounced kōsō. In a few words the character お (o) is used instead for morphological or historical reasons.

The character ウ can take dakuten to form ヴ (vu), a sound foreign to the Japanese language and traditionally approximated by ブ (bu).

In hentaigana a variant of う is appeared that retains cursive Kanji 宇.

Stroke order

Stroke order in writing う

Stroke order in writing ウ

Stroke order in writing う

The hiragana う is written in two strokes:

1. At the top of the character, a short diagonal crook: proceeding diagonally downwards from the left, then reversing direction and ending at the lower left.
2. A broad curving stroke: beginning at the left, rising slightly, then curving back and ending at the left.

Stroke order in writing ウ

The katakana ウ is written in three strokes:

1. At the top of the character, a short vertical stroke, written from top to bottom.
2. A similar stroke, but lower and positioned at the left.
3. A broad angled stroke: beginning as a horizontal line written from left to right, then reversing direction and proceeding downwards from right to left as a curved diagonal. The horizontal line must touch both the other strokes. Apart from the short diagonal, the character is identical to フ.

Other communicative representations

Japanese radiotelephony alphabet	Wabun code
上野のウ Ueno no "U"	▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ^ⓘ

Japanese Navy Signal Flag	Japanese semaphore	Japanese manual syllabary (fingerspelling)	Braille dots-14 Japanese Braille

Full Braille representation

う / ウ in Japanese Braille
う / ウ u	ゔ / ヴ vu	うう / ウー ū	ゔう / ヴー vū	+う / +ー chōon[a]

1. When lengthening "-u" or "-o" morae in Japanese braille, a Chōonpu is always used, as in standard katakana usage instead of adding an う / ウ.

Computer encodings

Character information

Preview	う		ウ		ｳ		ぅ
Unicode name	HIRAGANA LETTER U		KATAKANA LETTER U		HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER U		HIRAGANA LETTER SMALL U
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	12358	U+3046	12454	U+30A6	65395	U+FF73	12357	U+3045
UTF-8	227 129 134	E3 81 86	227 130 166	E3 82 A6	239 189 179	EF BD B3	227 129 133	E3 81 85
Numeric character reference	う	う	ウ	ウ	ｳ	ｳ	ぅ	ぅ
Shift JIS[4]	130 164	82 A4	131 69	83 45	179	B3	130 163	82 A3
EUC-JP[5]	164 166	A4 A6	165 166	A5 A6	142 179	8E B3	164 165	A4 A5
GB 18030[6]	164 166	A4 A6	165 166	A5 A6	132 49 151 53	84 31 97 35	164 165	A4 A5
EUC-KR[7] / UHC[8]	170 166	AA A6	171 166	AB A6			170 165	AA A5
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[9]	198 170	C6 AA	198 253	C6 FD			198 169	C6 A9
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[10]	198 236	C6 EC	199 162	C7 A2			198 235	C6 EB

Character information

Preview	ゥ		ｩ		ゔ		ヴ
Unicode name	KATAKANA LETTER SMALL U		HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER SMALL U		HIRAGANA LETTER VU		KATAKANA LETTER VU
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	12453	U+30A5	65385	U+FF69	12436	U+3094	12532	U+30F4
UTF-8	227 130 165	E3 82 A5	239 189 169	EF BD A9	227 130 148	E3 82 94	227 131 180	E3 83 B4
Numeric character reference	ゥ	ゥ	ｩ	ｩ	ゔ	ゔ	ヴ	ヴ
Shift JIS (plain)[4]	131 68	83 44	169	A9			131 148	83 94
Shift JIS (KanjiTalk 7)[11]	131 68	83 44	169	A9	136 104	88 68	131 148	83 94
Shift JIS-2004[12]	131 68	83 44	169	A9	130 242	82 F2	131 148	83 94
EUC-JP (plain)[5]	165 165	A5 A5	142 169	8E A9			165 244	A5 F4
EUC-JIS-2004[13]	165 165	A5 A5	142 169	8E A9	164 244	A4 F4	165 244	A5 F4
GB 18030[6]	165 165	A5 A5	132 49 150 53	84 31 96 35	129 57 166 54	81 39 A6 36	165 244	A5 F4
EUC-KR[7] / UHC[8]	171 165	AB A5					171 244	AB F4
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[9]	198 252	C6 FC					199 174	C7 AE
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[10]	199 161	C7 A1					199 240	C7 F0

Character information

Preview	㋒
Unicode name	CIRCLED KATAKANA U
Encodings	decimal	hex
Unicode	13010	U+32D2
UTF-8	227 139 146	E3 8B 92
Numeric character reference	㋒	㋒

References

1. Fukuzawa, Yukichi (5 December 1897). 福澤全集緖言 (in Japanese). Kyōbashi, Tokyo: Jiji Shinpō Sha. pp. 418–419. 安政五年余が江戶に來(きた)りて初(はじ)めて出(し𛃥つ)版(ぱん)したるは華(くわ)英(えい)通(つう)語(ご)なり是れは飜(ほん)譯(やく)と云ふ可き程(ほど)のものにも非ず原(げん)書(しよ)の橫(よこ)文(も)字(じ)に假(か)名(な)を附(つ)けたるまでにして事(こと)固(もと)より易し唯(たゞ)原(げん)書(しよ)のＶの字を正(せい)音(𛀕ん)に近からしめんと欲し試(こゝろみ)にウワの假(か)名(な)に濁(に)點(ごり)を附けてヴヷと記したるは當(たう)時(じ)思(𛀕もひ)付(つき)の新(しん)案(あん)と云ふ可きのみ
2. Vance, Timothy J. (1987). "Chapter 4: Consonants". An Introduction to Japanese Phonology. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. p. 32. ISBN 978-0-88706-360-2.
3. Fukuzawa, Yukichi (1860). 増訂華英通語 (PDF) (in Japanese). Vol. 1. Tokyo.
4. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-03-08]. "Shift-JIS to Unicode".
5. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "EUC-JP-2007". International Components for Unicode.
6. Standardization Administration of China (SAC) (2005-11-18). GB 18030-2005: Information Technology—Chinese coded character set.
7. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "IBM-970". International Components for Unicode.
8. Steele, Shawn (2000). "cp949 to Unicode table". Microsoft / Unicode Consortium.
9. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-02-11]. "BIG5 to Unicode table (complete)".
10. van Kesteren, Anne. "big5". Encoding Standard. WHATWG.
11. Apple Computer (2005-04-05) [1995-04-15]. "Map (external version) from Mac OS Japanese encoding to Unicode 2.1 and later". Unicode Consortium.
12. Project X0213 (2009-05-03). "Shift_JIS-2004 (JIS X 0213:2004 Appendix 1) vs Unicode mapping table".
13. Project X0213 (2009-05-03). "EUC-JIS-2004 (JIS X 0213:2004 Appendix 3) vs Unicode mapping table".