U (grapheme)

For a note on how AWE organizes its group of articles on vowels, basically by aspects of sound and of writing, see category:vowels.

U u

Thanks in large part to the historical phenomenon of the Great English Vowel Shift of the late fifteenth century, English is not a language with predictable ways of writing down sounds, particularly vowel sounds. This page attempts to group some of the ways in which the letter 'U' is used.

• As a simple letter (monographic) in the writing of the English language, it may be:
  • either of two distinct vowels, both labelled by people not specialized in phonetics as short '-u-':
    • the vowel, in the RP pronunciation of British English, in such words as 'put', 'sugar', 'push', 'foot', and 'could', and the first syllable of 'butcher', 'cushion' and 'pudding'. This is represented in the International Phonetic alphabet by the /ÊŠ/ symbol ('upsilon', 'Latin upsilon' or 'horseshoe u'), and is defined as a 'near-close near-back vowel'.
    • the vowel, in the RP pronunciation of British English, in such words as 'but', 'cup', 'shut' and 'up'. The symbol /ÊŒ/ ('turned v') is used in the International Phonetic alphabet to represent a 'open-mid back unrounded vowel'. In the accents of the northern half of England, this is usually realized as /ÊŠ/. (This shift in vowel pronunciation originated in southern England in the 17th century.)
      • (U may occasionally be met in the speech of some speakers of English representing the French 'u', (as in tu), German ü (über) and other non-English languages: the close front rounded vowel. (The IPA symbol for this is /y/, using the letter 'y'.) Scots speakers produce this sound, particularly in west coast 'you', or 'youse', and similar non-RP accents, like Geordie, have their own occurrences of it.)
  • The two realizations of U that are sometimes called long '-u-' are related in that the later, /ju:/, is a diphthongal variant of the purer /u:/. There is wide variation between individuals as to whether to use /u:/ or /ju:/ in given words, such as 'suit' (/su:t/ or /sju:t/ and 'lute' (/lu:t/ or /lju:t/).
    • /u:/ is a pure long vowel, to be found in 'true', 'rude', 'lunar' and 'flute'.
    • The diphthongal /ju:/ has the same '-u-' sound, preceded by /j/ - the IPA notation for what most everyday native speakers think of as '-y-'. This is immediately seen in 'you' and 'youth', and is the name in English of the letter; but 'you' is the syllable included in the RP realization of such words as 'music', 'huge', 'argue', 'pure' and 'tune'. (Many American speakers reduce this to the pure /u:/ in many words, such as 'tune' (sounding to British ears like 'toon'), 'endure' ('endoor'), 'Tuesday' ('toozday'), 'Duke' ('dook') and 'steward' ('stoo-ard').
  • U also has the consonantal, or semi-vowel, value of 'w' in such words as 'quiet', 'language', 'equal', 'persuade' and 'suite'. After 'g-', -u- has the effect of making it a hard '-g-', as in guard and guide.
• In digraphs, where '-u-' is the first element, it most usually represents this consonantal value (equivalent to 'w-') or a semi-automatic supplement to '-q-', particularly before '-a-' and '-o-' (but notice usual, estuary and Septuagint; and buoy. Otherwise, the two separate vowels may be pronounced separately, rather than as a diphthong: fluoride and its compounds; adjectives formed with '-ous' when they follow a [stem]] ending in '-u', as in arduous, assiduous, congruous, continuous, exiguous, impetuous, superfluous, ingenuous, perpetual, promiscuous; and words formed with the Latin numerals duo- and quattuor, such as dual and quadrant, as well as other Latin stems; and suet, fluid and vacuum. When '-u-' precedes '-e-' or '-i-' without representing the semivowel /w/, the combinations (-ui- and -ue-) represent the long '-u-', either in the 'pure' form of /uː/, as in 'fruit' and 'sue', or in the diphthongal /juː/ of 'nuisance' and 'pursuit'. Note the difference between suit, 'set of clothes' (/su:t/) and suite 'set of things other than clothes', [e.g. rooms, furniture, software, people]' /swiːt/.

• • -au- represents the /ɔː/ phoneme, as in 'sauce', 'author' and 'because' (note that in North American accents, this may sound far more like the /É’/ sound of 'got' and 'dog' - the same is true in some RP realization of words like 'Austrian' and 'Australian);
  • the same pattern can be represented by the 'double u' of w (aw) as in 'aweful', 'sawn', 'law' and 'drawl'.
  • -eu- normally represents the /juː/ diphthong as in 'Europe', 'euphemism', 'neurotic' and 'feud'. Less often, it represents the pure '-u-' of 'sleuth' and (the English pronunciation of) 'manoeuvre'.
  • -ou- has several uses (see -ough- for eight of them).
    • Its purest use is to represent the diphthong /aÊŠ/, as in out and cloud.
    • It can be a relic of the Middle English spelling of a long '-u-' as in through and soup, or a development. or loan, from French, as in coup, souvenir, tour and boulevard.
    • It can also be the less pure diphthong /juː/ as in you. Note the difference between your, /juːr/, and our, /aÊŠr/.
    • It can be either of the 'short' vowels, /ÊŠ/ as in [could, should and would, or /ÊŒ/ as in country, double southern, young and enough.
    • In journey, scourge, courteous and journal -ou- represents the /Éœ/ sound of 'learn' and 'turn'.
    • -ou is less regularly used for such words as soul (/əʊ/), sought and source (/ɒː/)

Much of the information on this page has been taken from McArthur and Bell (2004).