U u — u
«u» is a vowel of Catalan, the “The Catalan Latin alphabet” script, read as “oo”. A clean oo. Silent in qu and gu before e, i. For example, in the word “un” — one. The Catalan alphabet has 35 letters in total. It appears, for example, in the word “adéu” — goodbye.
In short
| Character | U u |
| Name | u |
| Sound | oo |
| What it is | a vowel |
In our course the character comes 27th of 35: the order here is not alphabetical but from familiar to unfamiliar, its neighbours in the course are t and v, appears in roughly every fifth word on this site.
How it sounds
A clean oo. Silent in qu and gu before e, i
The character in a word
A lone character is hard to remember: memory holds on to meaning, and a letter has none. The word it stands in provides that anchor.
- unone
The character in the “five vowels — eight sounds” group
The main difficulty of Catalan is not the letters but that unstressed vowels lose themselves: a and e merge into one muffled sound, o turns into u. This is the norm, and it is how you recognize a native speaker.
Words with this character
How to remember this character
A single letter is the hardest thing to remember: memory has nothing to hold on to — a character has no meaning. A three-step loop works: see the character, try to recall the sound (for «u» it is “oo”, as in the word “un”), see the right answer.
And come back to it the next day, not in an hour: a check a day or two later beats a check the same day. Nobody holds the whole alphabet — 35 letters — at once.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
Frequently asked
How does the Catalan character u read?
As “oo” — it is a vowel of the “The Catalan Latin alphabet” script. A clean oo. Silent in qu and gu before e, i. For example, in the word “un” — one.
What is the letter u called?
U. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Catalan script: it is called “u” and reads as “oo”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.