U (kana)

う in hiragana or ウ in katakana (romanised u) 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 [u͍]. 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
wyu うゅ ウュ
Form B (v-)
Romaji Hiragana Katakana
va ゔぁ ヴァ
vi 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
u
transliterationu
hiragana origin宇
katakana origin宇
spelling kana上野のウ
(Ueno no "u")
kana gojūon
warayamahanatasakaa
wirimihinichishikii
ruyumufunutsusukuu
weremehenetesekee
woroyomohonotosokoo

The hiragana form with dakuten, ゔ, representing the sound "v", is rarely seen on older words, since the sound does not occur in native Japanese words. However, it is becoming more common with Western influences.

Derivation

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

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 written as 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
  • 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*

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

Character information
Previewうウｳぅ
Unicode nameHIRAGANA LETTER UKATAKANA LETTER UHALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER UHIRAGANA LETTER SMALL U
Encodingsdecimalhexdecimalhexdecimalhexdecimalhex
Unicode12358U+304612454U+30A665395U+FF7312357U+3045
UTF-8227 129 134E3 81 86227 130 166E3 82 A6239 189 179EF BD B3227 129 133E3 81 85
Numeric character referenceううウウｳｳぅぅ
Shift JIS[1]130 16482 A4131 6983 45179B3130 16382 A3
EUC-JP[2]164 166A4 A6165 166A5 A6142 1798E B3164 165A4 A5
GB 18030[3]164 166A4 A6165 166A5 A6132 49 151 5384 31 97 35164 165A4 A5
EUC-KR[4] / UHC[5]170 166AA A6171 166AB A6170 165AA A5
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[6]198 170C6 AA198 253C6 FD198 169C6 A9
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[7]198 236C6 EC199 162C7 A2198 235C6 EB
Character information
Previewゥｩゔヴ
Unicode nameKATAKANA LETTER SMALL UHALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER SMALL UHIRAGANA LETTER VUKATAKANA LETTER VU
Encodingsdecimalhexdecimalhexdecimalhexdecimalhex
Unicode12453U+30A565385U+FF6912436U+309412532U+30F4
UTF-8227 130 165E3 82 A5239 189 169EF BD A9227 130 148E3 82 94227 131 180E3 83 B4
Numeric character referenceゥゥｩｩゔゔヴヴ
Shift JIS (plain)[1]131 6883 44169A9131 14883 94
Shift JIS (KanjiTalk 7)[8]131 6883 44169A9136 10488 68131 14883 94
Shift JIS-2004[9]131 6883 44169A9130 24282 F2131 14883 94
EUC-JP (plain)[2]165 165A5 A5142 1698E A9165 244A5 F4
EUC-JIS-2004[10]165 165A5 A5142 1698E A9164 244A4 F4165 244A5 F4
GB 18030[3]165 165A5 A5132 49 150 5384 31 96 35129 57 166 5481 39 A6 36165 244A5 F4
EUC-KR[4] / UHC[5]171 165AB A5171 244AB F4
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[6]198 252C6 FC199 174C7 AE
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[7]199 161C7 A1199 240C7 F0
Character information
Preview㋒
Unicode nameCIRCLED KATAKANA U
Encodingsdecimalhex
Unicode13010U+32D2
UTF-8227 139 146E3 8B 92
Numeric character reference㋒㋒
  1. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-03-08]. "Shift-JIS to Unicode".
  2. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "EUC-JP-2007". International Components for Unicode.
  3. Standardization Administration of China (SAC) (2005-11-18). GB 18030-2005: Information Technology—Chinese coded character set.
  4. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "IBM-970". International Components for Unicode.
  5. Steele, Shawn (2000). "cp949 to Unicode table". Microsoft / Unicode Consortium.
  6. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-02-11]. "BIG5 to Unicode table (complete)".
  7. van Kesteren, Anne. "big5". Encoding Standard. WHATWG.
  8. Apple Computer (2005-04-05) [1995-04-15]. "Map (external version) from Mac OS Japanese encoding to Unicode 2.1 and later". Unicode Consortium.
  9. Project X0213 (2009-05-03). "Shift_JIS-2004 (JIS X 0213:2004 Appendix 1) vs Unicode mapping table".
  10. Project X0213 (2009-05-03). "EUC-JIS-2004 (JIS X 0213:2004 Appendix 3) vs Unicode mapping table".
gollark: No, it's `contemporary advantages look like obvious crabs`.
gollark: Or `contemporary`.
gollark: The `c` is `cool`.
gollark: SMH my head, non-length-terminated strings.
gollark: * k🐝
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