History
Historically, Cyrillic U evolved as a specifically East Slavic short form of the digraph ⟨оу⟩ used in ancient Slavic texts to represent /u/. The digraph was itself a direct loan from the Greek alphabet, where the combination ⟨ου⟩ (omicron-upsilon) was also used to represent /u/.
Consequently, the form of the letter is derived from Greek upsilon ⟨Υ υ⟩, which was parallelly also taken over into the Cyrillic alphabet in another form, as Izhitsa ⟨Ѵ⟩. (The letter Izhitsa was removed from the Russian alphabet in the orthography reform of 1917/19.)
Read more about this topic: U (Cyrillic)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“You that would judge me do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“There is no example in history of a revolutionary movement involving such gigantic masses being so bloodless.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)