Friday 2 June 2017

υ | upsilon

The Greek letter υ (upsilon) was derived from the ancient Phoenician letter 𐤅 (wāw) which meant “hook”. This letter is the most prolific of all Greek alphabet: it gave rise to the Latin letters F, U, V, Y, W as well as Cyrillic Ѵ and У. In the same time, as its upper case Υ is too similar to the Latin Y and lower case too similar to the Latin u and v, it does not make a good mathematical or scientific symbol. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the lower-case υ is used to represent a labiodental approximant, as in Finnish veli /ˈʋeli/ or Norwegian Stavanger /stɑˈʋɑŋər/.

The letter ʊ (Latin upsilon) was derived from the Greek lower-case υ. It is used in the IPA to represent a near-close near-back rounded vowel, as in English put /pʊt/ or German kurz /kʊrts/.

More photos related to letters, numbers and sea glass @ Shutterstock.

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