У у — u
«u» is a vowel of Serbian, the “Serbian Cyrillic” script, read as “oo as in "food"”. A pure oo as in "food", without a glide. The Serbian alphabet has 30 letters in total, and this character can be played right here. It appears, for example, in the word “добро јутро” — good morning.
In short
| Character | У у |
| Name | u |
| Sound | oo as in "food" |
| What it is | a vowel |
In our course the character comes 24th of 30, its neighbours in the course are ћ and ф, appears in roughly every fifth word on this site.
How it sounds
A pure oo as in "food", without a glide
Other written forms
The same character is written differently on a shop sign and in a book. Here are all the forms you may meet.
| Form | Character | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Latin | u | — |
The character in the “read them the way they look” group
Twenty-four letters an English eye reads almost without lessons — they look like Latin and sound like it. Two habits to pick up: e is always e as in "bed", and an unstressed o never fades to "uh".
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, 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 — 30 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 Serbian character у read?
As “oo as in "food"” — it is a vowel of the “Serbian Cyrillic” script. A pure oo as in "food", without a glide.
What is the letter у called?
U. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Serbian script: it is called “u” and reads as “oo as in "food"”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.