LingoflyУ у — u
«u» is a vowel of the Ukrainian script, read as “oo as in "food"”. A pure oo as in "food". The Ukrainian alphabet has 33 letters in total. It appears, for example, in the word “доброго ранку” (dobroho ranku) — 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 33, its neighbours in the course are т and ф, appears in roughly every fifth word on this site.
How to type У (U) у (U)
- On a phone: add the Ukrainian 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"
The character in the “other twenty-six” group
Six read the way they look: а (a), е, к, м, о (o), т. Six only look Latin: в (v) is v, н is n, р is r, с is s, у (U) is oo, and х is the ch of Scottish "loch". The other fourteen are new shapes. Thirteen of them stand for sounds you already know, and ь has no sound: it softens the letter before it.
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 — 33 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 Ukrainian character у (U) read?
As “oo as in "food"” — it is a vowel of the Ukrainian script. A pure oo as in "food".
What is the letter у (U) called?
U. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Ukrainian 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.