Short U (Cyrillic)

Cyrillic letter short U
Phonetic usage:	[w]
The Cyrillic script
Slavic letters
Non-Slavic letters
Archaic letters
	List of Cyrillic letters; Cyrillic digraphs;

Short U (Ў ў; italics: Ў ў) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. The only Slavic language using this letter is the Belarusian Cyrillic script. Among the non-Slavic languages using Cyrillic alphabets, ў is used in Dungan, Karakalpak, Mansi, Sakhalin Nivkh, and Siberian Yupik. It is also used in Uzbek – this letter corresponds to Oʻ in the Uzbek Latin alphabet.

History

The letter originates from the letter izhitsa ⟨Ѵ ѵ⟩ with a breve (Іереѵ̆ская власть, пучина Егеѵ̆ская, etc.) used in certain Ukrainian books at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries. Later, this character was probably in use in the Romanian Cyrillic script, from where it was borrowed in 1837 by the compilers of Ukrainian poetry book Rusalka Dnistrovaja (Русалка днѣстровая). The book's foreword reads “we have accepted Serbian џ . . . and Wallachian [Romanian] ў . . .”.[1] In this book, ⟨ў⟩ is used mostly for etymological [l] transformed to [w]. Modern Ukrainian spelling uses ⟨в⟩ ([v]) in that position.

For Belarusian, the combination of the Cyrillic letter U with a breve ⟨ў⟩ was proposed by P.A. Bessonov in 1870.[2] Before that, various ad hoc adaptations of the Latin U were used, for example, italicized in some publications of Vintsent Dunin-Martsinkyevich, with acute accent ⟨ú⟩ in Jan Czeczot's Da milykh mužyczkoú (To dear peasants, 1846 edition), W with breve ⟨w̆⟩ in Epimakh-Shypila, 1889, or just the letter ⟨u⟩ itself (like in publications of Konstanty Kalinowski, 1862–1863). A U with haček ⟨ǔ⟩ was also used.[3]

After 1870, both the distinction for the phoneme and the new shape of the letter still were not consistently used until the mid-1900s for technical problems, per Bulyka. Among the first publications using it were folklore collections published by Michał Federowski and the first edition of Francišak Bahuševič's Dudka Biełaruskaja (Belarusian flute, published in Kraków, 1891).[3] For quite a while other kinds of renderings (plain ⟨u⟩, or with added accent, haček, or caret) were still being used, sometimes within a single publication (Bahushevich, 1891, Pachobka, 1915), also supposedly because of technical problems.

Usage

Belarusian

The letter is called non-syllabic u or short u (Belarusian: у нескладовае, u nieskładovaje[4] or у кароткае, u karotkaje) in Belarusian because although it resembles the vowel у (u), it does not form syllables. Its equivalent in the Belarusian Latin alphabet is ⟨ŭ⟩,[5] although it is also sometimes transcribed as ⟨w⟩.[6]

In native Belarusian words, ⟨ў⟩ represents a [w],[7] as in хлеў, pronounced [xlʲew] (chleŭ, ‘shed’) or воўк [vɔwk] (voŭk, ‘wolf’). This is similar to the ⟨w⟩ in English cow /kaʊ/.

The letter ⟨ў⟩ cannot occur before a non-iotified vowel in native words; when that would be required by grammar would, ⟨ў⟩ is replaced by ⟨в⟩ /v/. Compare хлеў ([xlʲew] chleŭ) with за хлявом ([za xlʲaˈvom] za chlavóm, ‘behind the shed’). Also, when a word starts with ⟨у⟩ /u/ and follows a vowel and so it forms a diphthong through liaison, it is usually, but not necessarily, written with ⟨ў⟩ instead. For example, у хляве ([u xlʲaˈvʲe] u chlavié, ‘in the shed’) but увайшлі яны ў хлеў ([uvajʂˈlʲi jaˈnɨ w xlʲew] uvajšlí janý ŭ chleŭ, ‘they went into the shed’).[4][8]

The letter ⟨ў⟩ is also sometimes used to represent the labial-velar approximant /w/ in foreign loanwords: this usage is allowed by the 2005 standardization of Taraškievica. When it is used thus it can appear before non-iotified vowels.[4]

Uzbek

This letter is the 32nd letter of the Uzbek Cyrillic alphabet. It corresponds to Oʻ in the current Uzbek alphabet. It is different from the regular O, which is represented by the Cyrillic letter О. Furthermore, it is pronounced as either [o] or [ø], in contrast to the letter O, which is pronounced as [ɒ].[9]

Monument

In September 2003, during the tenth Days of Belarusian Literacy celebrations, the authorities in Polatsk, the oldest Belarusian city, made a monument to honor the unique Cyrillic Belarusian letter ⟨ў⟩. The original idea for the monument came from professor Paval Siemčanka, a scholar of Cyrillic calligraphy and type.[10]

Computing codes

Character	Ў		ў
Unicode name	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SHORT U		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHORT U
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	1038	U+040E	1118	U+045E
UTF-8	208 142	D0 8E	209 158	D1 9E
Numeric character reference	Ў	Ў	ў	ў
Code page 855	153	99	152	98
Code page 866	246	F6	247	F7
Windows-1251	161	A1	162	A2
ISO-8859-5	174	AE	254	FE
Macintosh Cyrillic[11]	216	D8	217	D9

Notes

“...приймилисмо сербскоє џ (виџу wydzu) и волоскоє ў (аў, ɑʋ Erazm. Rotterd., 𝖆𝖚, еў, ɛʋ: спѣваў, spiwɑʋ; душеў, duʃɛʋ)...”. Markiyan Shashkevych (1837), Rusalka Dnistrovaya (Mermaid of the Dniester), p V.
Булыка (Bulyka). У нескладовае // Энцыклапедыя літаратуры і мастацтва Беларусі. Т.4. p.377.
Per (Bulyka).
- Bušlakoŭ, Juraś, Vincuk Viačorka, Źmicier Sańko, Źmicier Saŭka. 2005. Klasyčny pravapis. Zbor praviłaŭ: Sučasnaja narmalizacyja [Classical orthography. Set of rules: Contemporary normalization]. (PDF.) Vilnia—Miensk: Audra.
Б. Тарашкевіч. Беларуская граматыка для школ. – Вільня : Беларуская друкарня ім. Фр. Скарыны, 1929 ; Мн. : «Народная асвета», 1991 [факсімільн.]. – Выданьне пятае пераробленае і пашыранае.
"Romanization Systems Currently Approved by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN) and the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use (PCGN)". National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 5 April 2017.
E.g., per Беларуская мова: Вучэб. дапам. / Э. Д. Блінава, Н. В. Гаўрош, М. Ц. Кавалёва і інш.; Пад рэд. М. С. Яўневіча. — Мн. : Выш. школа, 1991. ISBN 5-339-00539-9.
http://vitba.org/fofmb/chapter1.html
"Transliteration of Non-Roman Scripts: Uzbek" (PDF). Institute of the Estonian Language. Retrieved 12 November 2015.
http://by.holiday.by/skarb/821 Памятник букве "Ў" в Полоцке]
https://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/APPLE/CYRILLIC.TXT]

External links

The dictionary definition of Ў at Wiktionary
The dictionary definition of ў at Wiktionary

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[1] “...приймилисмо сербскоє џ (виџу wydzu) и волоскоє ў (аў, ɑʋ Erazm. Rotterd., 𝖆𝖚, еў, ɛʋ: спѣваў, spiwɑʋ; душеў, duʃɛʋ)...”. Markiyan Shashkevych (1837), Rusalka Dnistrovaya (Mermaid of the Dniester), p V.

[2] Булыка (Bulyka). У нескладовае // Энцыклапедыя літаратуры і мастацтва Беларусі. Т.4. p.377.

[Bulyka-3] Per (Bulyka).

[pravapis-4] Bušlakoŭ, Juraś, Vincuk Viačorka, Źmicier Sańko, Źmicier Saŭka. 2005. Klasyčny pravapis. Zbor praviłaŭ: Sučasnaja narmalizacyja [Classical orthography. Set of rules: Contemporary normalization]. (PDF.) Vilnia—Miensk: Audra.

[5] Bušlakoŭ, Juraś, Vincuk Viačorka, Źmicier Sańko, Źmicier Saŭka. 2005. Klasyčny pravapis. Zbor praviłaŭ: Sučasnaja narmalizacyja [Classical orthography. Set of rules: Contemporary normalization]. (PDF.) Vilnia—Miensk: Audra.

[5] Б. Тарашкевіч. Беларуская граматыка для школ. – Вільня : Беларуская друкарня ім. Фр. Скарыны, 1929 ; Мн. : «Народная асвета», 1991 [факсімільн.]. – Выданьне пятае пераробленае і пашыранае.

[6] "Romanization Systems Currently Approved by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN) and the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use (PCGN)". National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 5 April 2017.

[7] E.g., per Беларуская мова: Вучэб. дапам. / Э. Д. Блінава, Н. В. Гаўрош, М. Ц. Кавалёва і інш.; Пад рэд. М. С. Яўневіча. — Мн. : Выш. школа, 1991. ISBN 5-339-00539-9.

[8] ttp://vitba.org/fofmb/chapter1.html

[9] "Transliteration of Non-Roman Scripts: Uzbek" (PDF). Institute of the Estonian Language. Retrieved 12 November 2015.

[10] ttp://by.holiday.by/skarb/821 Памятник букве "Ў" в Полоцке]

[11] ttps://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/APPLE/CYRILLIC.TXT]