Û

Û, û (u-circumflex) is a letter of the French, Friulian, Kurdish, and Turkish alphabets. This letter was used in the ISO 9:1995 system of Cyrillic transliteration as the letter Ю and also in Wade-Giles (one of the romanization systems in Chinese) for apical dental unrounded vowel as in tzû, tz'û, ssû, corresponds to present zi, ci, si in Pinyin respectively. It is also in Taos.

Usage in various languages

Afrikaans

In Afrikaans, û is a punctuated form of u and a usage example includes "brûe", plural of "brug" (= bridge).

French

In French, û does not change the pronunciation of the letter u. In some words, it is used to distinguish two homographs (such as jeune "young" versus jeûne "a fast"). In certain other words, such as mû, the circumflex has no disambiguating value; attempts have been made to abolish it in words such as these. See use of the circumflex in French.

Friulian

Û is used to represent the sound /uː/.

Kurdish

Û is used in Latin Kurmanjî in the Kurdish alphabet to represent a close central rounded vowel, /ʉ/.

Turkish

Û is used to indicate the consonant before "u" is palatalised, as in "sükûnet" (quietness), pronounced /sycuːˈnet/.

Welsh

In Welsh, û is used to represent long stressed u [ɨː] or [iː] when, without the circumflex, the vowel would be pronounced as short [ɨ] or [ɪ], e.g., cytûn [kəˑtɨːn, kəˑtiːn] "agreed", or in bûm [bɨːm, biːm] "I was", as opposed to bum [bɨm, bɪm] "five" (soft-mutated prenominal form).

Masovian Dialect

In Masovian alphabet, û is used to represent English /yoo/.

Character mappings

See also

• Circumflex