U

U, u [Called ‘you’]. The 21st LETTER of the Roman ALPHABET as used for English. It originated in the Phoenician consonant symbol waw, the common ancestor of the letters F, U, V, W, Y. The Greeks adopted waw as upsilon (γ, lower case υ), which the Romans took from the Etruscans as V. The distinction in English between u as vowel and v as consonant was not made consistently in print until the 17c. Previously, the distinction tended to be positional, not phonological, with v used word-initially and u medially: vnder, liue. Until the 19c, some dictionaries listed u and v together rather than successively, or v before u in the alphabet. The use of V for U has survived into the 20c for some lapidary inscriptions: the BBC's Bush House in London has BVSH HOVSE carved over the entrance.

Sound values

(1) Formerly, the common feature in the pronunciation of u, v, w, was lip movement: lip-rounding is a feature of the back vowel in put and truth and the front vowel in French tu; /v/ is a labio-dental consonant; /w/ is a labial semi-vowel. In Modern English, French u has been Anglicized as a diphthong with a preceding i-glide (music, argue) and u commonly represents /w/ before a vowel after g, q, and s (anguish, quiet, persuade). (2) Beside these traditional values of u, most English accents have a further value. By the 17c, a vowel shift in southern England had changed the put-value of u in many words to a new sound, now heard in most accents, but not in the accents of the English Midlands and North. This is the value of u in but (except for the North of England), which today no longer rhymes with put and involves no lip-rounding. (3) In general pronunciation, the letter u spells four distinct vowel sounds, as in but, put, truth, music, as well as the /w/ in quiet, etc. The four vowel sounds will be referred to below as the values but-u, put-u, truth-u, music-u.

Long and short U

The four vowel values can be grouped into long and short pairs: but-u and put-u are short, truth-u and music-u are long. Like the long and short values of the other vowel letters, short and long u alternate in related words: assumption/assume, humble/humility, judge/judicious, number/numerous, punish/punitive, reduction/reduce, study/student.

Variation in values

The four values are not consistently distinguished. ScoE typically does not distinguish put-u and truth-u, and AmE often gives a truth-u to words pronounced with music-u in RP: AmE duty rhyming with booty, RP duty rhyming with beauty. This change occurs only after alveolar consonants: /d, l, n, r, s, t/. Because the but/put split did not take place in the Midlands and North of England, but/put rhyme in the accents of these regions. This non-distinction of but-u and put-u has often been stigmatized as non-standard, while their occasional reversal (butcher being pronounced with but-u rather than put-u) is considered to be hypercorrection towards RP. Variation between truth-u and music-u is not always regional, the distinction generally being blurred after l, s, as when lute/loot may or may not be pronounced as homophones, and sue/suit may in BrE have either long value of u. Although four possible vowel values in many accents make u a complex letter (with division into short and long realizations, and with variation between these values), a particular value is generally apparent from the environment. U is normally short except syllable-finally, and truth-u only arises after certain consonants.

Other spellings

The values of u have common alternative spellings. As a result of vowel shifts or spelling changes, patterns have arisen with the sound values of u in but, put, truth, but using o (son, wolf, do, move), or oe (does, shoes), or oo (blood, good, food), or ou (touch, could, youth). Similarly the sound of long u is commonly spelt ew (crew, dew, few, newt, pewter, steward); arguably w should be seen here as a positional variant of u (compare few/feud).

But-U (short)

Short u occurs before final consonants and (usually multiple) medial consonants: initial u in words of Old English origin (udder, ugly, under, up, us, utter, and the negative prefix un- as in unborn, uneventful); before two consonants in some non-English words (ulcer, ultimate, umbilical, umpire); in monosyllables ending in a consonant letter (tub, bud, cuff, mug, luck, cull, bulk, hum, sun, bunk, cup, bus, just, hut); in short-vowel monosyllables ending in silent e (budge, bulge, plunge). A few monosyllables contain put-u (see below), and the truth-u in truth itself (and also in Ruth) is an exception. In polysyllables, but-u usually precedes two consonants, either doubled (rubble, bucket, rudder, suffer, nugget, sullen, summer, supple, hurry, russet, butter) or as a string (publish, indulgent, number, abundant). Words ending in -ion similarly have short u before two consonants: percussion, convulsion, compunction, destruction, assumption, but long u before a single consonant in confusion, evolution. Exceptions to these patterns include long u in duplicate, lucrative, rubric and as indicated by final magic e in scruple (contrast short ou in couple); short u before a single consonant in study (contrast muddy, Judy) and in bunion (contrast trunnion, union).

Put-U (short)

The lip-rounded put-u occurs in a few words, especially after the labial consonants b, p, and before l: bull, bullet, bulletin, bullion, bully, bush, bushel, butcher, cuckoo, cushion, full, pudding, pull, pullet, pulley, pulpit, push, puss, put, sugar. Muslim is heard with both but-u and put-u. Put-u is nevertheless not a rare sound in English, being also spelt ou in the common could, would, should, and frequently oo, as in foot, good.

Truth-U and Music-U (long)

Long u (whether, truth-u or music-u) occurs in polysyllables before a single consonant with following vowel: contrast fundamental/funeral and the patterns in cucumber, undulate. Long u occurs in: alluvial, deputy, educate, fury, ludicrous, lunar, peculiar, refusal, ruby, rufous, ruminate, superb. In final closed syllables, long u is usually shown by magic (lengthening) e: amuse, flute, fume, huge, prelude, puce, puke, pure, refute, rude, rule, ruse, tube, tune. In accordance with the above patterns, the monosyllabic prefix sub- has but-u (subject), but disyllabic super- has long u. In most circumstances, long u is music-u, the initial i-glide being assimilated to produce truth-u only after certain consonants. Music-u is therefore found word-initially before a single consonant, especially in derivations from the Latin root unus (one), as in unicorn, unify, union, unity, universe. Other cases include ubiquitous, urine, use, utility, Music-u follows consonants as in ambulance, acute, confuse, coagulate, music, annual, compute, enthuse, revue, and in RP but commonly not in AmE as in duke, tube. Both music-u and truth-u are heard after l, s (lute, suit). Truth-u occurs after r, sh (includingt the affricate j) and is explicit in yu: truth, prune, Shute, chute, Schubert, June, jury, yule. In an unstressed medial syllable, ‘long’ music-u tends in fact to be a rather short vowel: contrast deputy, educate with dispute, duke.

Final U

Syllable-final u is pronounced long. Word-finally, it has an additional silent e in long-established English words (argue, continue, due, rue), although this commonly disappears before suffixes (argue/argument, continue/continual, due/duty, true/truth). Final u occurs without following e, particularly in recently formed or borrowed words: emu, flu, guru, Hindu, jujitsu, menu. Long u also arises syllable-finally before a vowel (contrast annul, annual): dual, suet, fluid, fluoride, vacuum.

U before R

Before r with no following vowel, RP gives u the same value as e or i before r: fur, hurt, nurse, absurd, purchase, concur (compare her, sir). When a vowel follows, u is long (rural, bureau, during), but is modified with the hint of an inserted schwa (cure, pure, endure; rural, bureau, during). Like other multiple consonants, rr normally induces a preceding but-u: burrow, current, flurry, furrier (noun): but the adjective furry retains the value of u of its base form fur, and its comparative furrier is then a homograph of the noun furrier with its but-u.

U and schwa

Like all vowel letters in English, u when unstressed in fluent speech may lose distinctive value, being reduced to SCHWA: initially (until, upon), before a stressed syllable (suggest, surround), and after the main stress especially before l, m, n, r, s (medially, as in faculty, calumny, voluntary, Saturday, industry, and in final syllables awful, difficult, autumn, album, minimum, museum, tedium, vacuum, murmur, injure, circus, radius). In some words, u is reduced to schwa while retaining the preceding i-glide of music-u: century, failure. In lettuce and in the noun minute, u is commonly reduced to schwa, and in RP to the value of short i. The adjective minute has music-u.

Assimilation

Phonetically, music-u is a diphthong consisting of a glide i-sound followed by truth-u, but in fluent speech the glide often affects the value of a preceding consonant, sometimes being assimilated with it entirely, as when duty, tune are spoken as ‘jooty’, ‘choon’ (typically not in North America), and casual, picture are spoken as ‘kazhel’, ‘pikcher’. Such assimilation is usual before the suffixes -ual, -ure after d, s, t, z: gradual, casual, mutual; verdure, closure, picture, azure. The assimilation with initial s in sugar, sure is of such long standing that the s is perceived as having an abnormal value. For some speakers, the tendency extends to assume and presume spoken as ‘ashoom’, ‘prezhoom’.

Semi-vowel U

(1) vowel occurs commonly in words of FRENCH derivation and typically after g (distinguish, guava, language, sanguine), q (quash, quail, quest, quit, quiet, quote, acquaint, equal, loquacious), and s (suave, suede, suite, persuade). (2) In similar contexts, however, u may have its full vowel value: contrast suite/suicide. (3) Some words with initial qu are of OLD ENGLISH origin, having changed their spelling after the Norman Conquest from cw- to qu-: cwen, cwic now written queen, quick.

Silent U

(1) Especially in words of French derivation: after g (where it serves to distinguish hard and soft g: page/vague), as in vague, fatigue, vogue, fugue, and after q, as in opaque, technique, mosquito. (2) In initial qu (quay, queue) and in conquer and often languor, although pronounced /w/ in conquest, languid. (3) Elsewhere, u is inserted only to preserve the hard value of preceding g: Portugal/Portuguese (see G, Q). (4) Although apparently part of a digraph, u is effectively silent in gauge, aunt, laugh, BrE draught (compare AmE draft), build, cough, trough, though, BrE mould, moult, smoulder (compare AmE mold, molt, smolder), boulder, shoulder, soul, buoy (especially BrE), buy. Although u is silent in biscuit, circuit, it arguably indicates preceding hard c (contrast explicit). It is optionally silent in conduit.

Digraphs

U often has the secondary function of indicating a modified value for a preceding letter. For the digraph au (as in taut) and ou (as in out), see A, O respectively. Eau in beauty has the value of music-u. For final eau (bureau, etc.), see E. The main digraphs having one of the four sound values of u are:

EU. (1) The digraph eu regularly represents music-u, especially in words of GREEK derivation (Europe, eulogy, pseudo-, neurotic), but occasionally elsewhere (feud). (2) In sleuth, the eu represents truth-u, as does oeu in BrE manoeuvre (AmE maneuver).

OU. (1) The digraph ou has one of the values of u, except when it is used as a standard digraph for the diphthong in out and for long o as in soul. See O. The spelling ou sometimes derives from French, and sometimes represents earlier pronunciation with a long vowel. (2) It represents but-u as in country, couple, cousin, double, southern, touch, trouble, young, with following /f/ spelt-gh as in enough, rough, tough, and in BrE courage, flourish, nourish, AmE giving this -our- the value as in journey. (3) It represents put-u in could, should, would and truth-u in ghoul, group, soup, through, uncouth, wound (noun), youth and also in such recent French loans as boulevard, bouquet, coup, BrE route (in AmE often homophonous with rout), souvenir, tour, trousseau. (4) It represents modified u before r: courteous, courtesy (compare cognate curts[e]y), journal (cognate diurnal), journey, scourge (compare urge).

UE, UI. The combinations ue and ui usually indicate long u: Tuesday, juice, sluice, bruise, nuisance, cruise, fruit, suit, pursuit, recruit. The i is redundant when the word already ends in e: compare reduce/juice, ruse/bruise. In the verbs related to suit, pursuit, the i is replaced by e: sue, pursue.

Variations

(1) Historically, there has been variation of spelling and pronunciation, especially between u and o: in the cognates custom/costume, ton/tun, tone/tune. See O. One factor may have been a need to distinguish the vertical strokes or minims of u from the vertical strokes of adjacent letters in MIDDLE ENGLISH manuscripts; hence Middle English sone rather than sune for Old English sunu and Modern English son. (2) Similarly, w may sometimes have been used to avoid confusion of u/v (contrast coward/cover and French couard), or to distinguish homophones (foul/fowl), or even meanings of the ‘same’ word, such as the recent differentiation of flour/flower. (3) In general, ou occurs medially (house, though) and ow more often finally (how, throw), before vowels (tower), and before l (howl, bowl), n (clown, sown), and d (crowd). However, the choice between ou, ow is often arbitrary, as in the cognates noun/renown. (4) For AmE -or, BrE -our, see o. (5) The number four loses u in the derivative forty, though not in fourteen. See CLASSICAL ENDING, V, W.