LingoflyУ у — u
«u» is a vowel of the Serbian 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. Looks like a Latin y, but reads oo. It appears, for example, in the word “добро јутро” (dobro jutro) — good morning.
In short
| Character | У (u) у (u) |
| 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 to type У (u) у (u)
- On a phone: add the Serbian keyboard in the keyboard settings (Gboard on Android; Keyboards in the iPhone settings).
- In Word on Windows: type U+0443 and press Alt+X right after it — the code turns into the character.
- On a Mac: switch to the Unicode Hex Input source, hold Option and type 0443.
- Unicode code points: у (u) — U+0443, У (u) — U+0423. With them, the characters can be found in the character map of any system.
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 “other twenty-four” group
Six of them read the way they look: а (a), е, к, м, о (o), т. Six only look Latin: В is v, Н is n, Р is r, С (s) is s, У (u) is oo, Х is the ch of Scottish "loch", but lighter. The other twelve are new shapes for familiar sounds.
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 (u) read?
As “oo as in "food"” — it is a vowel of the Serbian script. A pure oo as in "food", without a glide.
What is the letter у (u) 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.
What can у (u) be confused with?
Looks like a Latin y, but reads oo. Similar characters are best studied side by side and deliberately compared: learned on different days, they stay separate and get mixed up at their first meeting inside a word.