Kannada Letter Uu

Use a Kannada transliteration or phonetic keyboard. On a Latin keyboard, type the vowel sound — usually “uu” or “oo” — and pick the independent letter, not the dependent sign ೂ. Kannada virtual keyboards give it its own key too.

What sound does the Kannada letter uu represent?

A long “oo” vowel at the start of a syllable. Think of the “oo” in “moon” held a beat longer than the short u in ಉ — the length counts, because short and long u distinguish Kannada words. After a consonant the same vowel is written with the dependent sign ೂ; independent letters like ಊ form what Kannada grammar calls the svara set.

The letter grew with its script — nobody invented it. Kannada descends from Brahmi, an ancient writing system used across South Asia. Kannada words turn up inside Tamil-language inscriptions — texts carved on durable surfaces — from the 3rd–1st centuries BCE, and early Kannada texts written in Brahmi date to around 450 AD.

Inscriptions in a shared Telugu-Kannada script run through the 4th–7th centuries CE. Letter forms from the Kadamba and Chalukya scripts fed Old Kannada, which developed into the separate Kannada and Telugu scripts by about 1500; the two still share letter shapes. Kannada also writes Tulu, a neighboring language.