Mongolian Letter U

ᠤ is the Mongolian vowel letter transcribed u.

Mongolian spelling uses vowel harmony, so surrounding letters help settle its reading. The script evolved from Old Uyghur, itself descended from Sogdian, and took shape for Mongolian writing in the early 13th century. After conquering the Naiman, the Mongol court took it up through T’a-t’a Tonga, a Naiman seal-bearer, in 1204. The oldest surviving Uighur-Mongolian sample is the Yisüngge (Chinggis) stele, a stone inscription dated 1224–1225.

Why does ᠤ sometimes look like ᠣ?

Mongolian O is the key visual lookalike.

ᠤ and ᠣ are different letters, but their medial and final connected glyphs can be identical; isolated and initial forms are more likely to differ. Mongolian script runs vertically in columns from top to bottom, arranged left to right, and letters join along a central line. Position shapes each letter; an invisible free variation selector can request a variant, while font support affects what appears.

How did ᠤ reach modern writing?

Its writing system became the source for related scripts.

Classical Mongolian became the Mongol Empire’s official script in the early 13th century. Manchu adapted it for state writing in the late 16th century; Oirat scholars developed Todo from it in the 17th century; Sibe later developed from Manchu in the mid-20th century.

Mongolia introduced Latin in the 1930s and mandated Cyrillic in the 1940s.