LingoflyU u
«u» is a vowel of the Uzbek script, read as “u as in put”. A clean oo sound, said deep in the mouth. There is no ü in the spelling — u stands in its place. For example, in the word “uy” — house. The Uzbek alphabet has 29 letters in total. Hence uy — "house": two vowels in a row, oo-y. It appears, for example, in the word “Assalomu alaykum” — hello (formal).
In short
| Character | U u |
| Sound | u as in put |
| What it is | a vowel |
In our course the character comes 20th of 30: 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 sound, said deep in the mouth. There is no ü in the spelling — u stands in its place.
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.
- house
The character in the “five vowels — and the grammar stands on them” group
The ending of a word bends to the last vowel of the stem (vowel harmony): daraxtga, but dengizga — one meaning "to", two shapes. a, o, u are back vowels (deeper in the mouth), e and i are front. There is no separate ü: u does its work.
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 “u as in put”, as in the word “uy”), 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 — 29 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 Uzbek character u read?
As “u as in put” — it is a vowel of the Uzbek script. A clean oo sound, said deep in the mouth. There is no ü in the spelling — u stands in its place. For example, in the word “uy” — house.