U (kana)

u
hiragana katakana
transliteration	u
hiragana origin	宇
katakana origin	宇
spelling kana	上野のウ (Ueno no "u")

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

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).

Stroke order

Stroke order in writing う

Stroke order in writing ウ

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.

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

• Computer encodings

Character	う		ウ		ｳ		ｩ
Unicode name	HIRAGANA LETTER U		KATAKANA LETTER U		HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER U		HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER SMALL U
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	12358	U+3046	12454	U+30A6	65395	U+FF73	65385	U+FF69
UTF-8	227 129 134	E3 81 86	227 130 166	E3 82 A6	239 189 179	EF BD B3	239 189 169	EF BD A9
Numeric character reference	う	う	ウ	ウ	ｳ	ｳ	ｩ	ｩ
Shift JIS	130 164	82 A4	131 69	83 45	179	B3	169	A9

Character	ぅ		ゥ		ゔ		ヴ
Unicode name	HIRAGANA LETTER SMALL U		KATAKANA LETTER SMALL U		HIRAGANA LETTER VU		KATAKANA LETTER VU
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	12357	U+3045	12453	U+30A5	12436	U+3094	12532	U+30F4
UTF-8	227 129 133	E3 81 85	227 130 165	E3 82 A5	227 130 148	E3 82 94	227 131 180	E3 83 B4
Numeric character reference	ぅ	ぅ	ゥ	ゥ	ゔ	ゔ	ヴ	ヴ
Shift JIS	130 163	82 A3	131 68	83 44			131 148	83 94

• Braille

う / ウ in Japanese Braille
う / ウ u	ゔ / ヴ vu	うう / ウー ū	ゔう / ヴー vū

• Japanese semaphore

• Phonetic alphabet: 「上野のウ」 ("u of Ueno")
• Morse code: ・・－