The Letter O

I found this entry in Oxford Reference Online and thought that you'd like to see it.
ref: U,V

Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language

O, o [Called 'oh`]. The 15th LETTER of the Roman ALPHABET as used for English. It originated as the Phoenician consonant symbol 'ain, representing a pharyngeal plosive (or 'glottal catch`). It had a roughly circular form and meant 'eye`. The Greeks adopted it as a vowel symbol, at first for both long and short values. Later, a letter omega (O) (that is O-mega, 'big O`) was created for the long value, with O, known as omicron (that is, O-micron, 'little o`), kept for the short value. LATIN took over only omicron, for both long and short values.

Sound values
In English, as well as long, short, and DIGRAPH values, o has some irregular values, often overlapping with values of u. In some words, the letter o has a different value in different accents. Native speakers differ as to whether log and dog rhyme, whether bother has the vowel of father, whether horse and hoarse are HOMOPHONES, and whether your is pronounced like yore or as ewer. The sound values are listed in the following paragraphs as short O, word-final long O, pre-consonantal long O, O with the value of U, O and the inflections of DO, and O with doubled consonants.

Short O
(1) In monosyllables before consonants, but not before h, r, v, w, y: mob, lock, botch, odd, soft, log, dodge, doll, on, top, Oz. The biblical name Job, however, has long o. (2) In polysyllables such as pocket, soccer, biography, geometry. (3) Before consonant plus e in gone, shone, in one pronunciation of scone (contrast tone), and before ugh, representing /f/, in cough, trough. (4) In RP and related accents, a lengthened variant of short o occurs before word-final r (or, nor), medially as in corn, adornment, and before final silent e as in ignore. The same value occurs as oa uniquely in broad, as ou in ought, thought, etc., and is sometimes heard (as it commonly was in old-fashioned RP) instead of short o in off, often, lost, sometimes facetiously or mockingly rendered as aw in 'crawss` (cross), 'Gawd` (God); the poet John Keats, a Londoner, rhymed crosses and horses. This value is also spelt au, aw, as seen in the sets sauce/source, fraught/fought/fort. (5) In other accents, this distinction does not occur: in most Scottish accents, for example, the same vowel is heard in cot, caught, ought, and sauce does not rhyme with source. (6) In RP and related accents, the vowel sound in word, work, world, whorl is the same as that in were, and the set whirled, whorled, world is homophonous.

Word-final long O
(1) Standard long o occurs word-finally spelt simply as -o in the monosyllables fro, go, so, and in polysyllabic loans (hero, piano, potato, radio, tomato, zero), but in lasso final o usually has the value of long u. There is often uncertainty whether such loans form their plurals with -s (armadillos) or -es (potatoes) or optionally either (lassos, lassoes). Those ending in vowel plus o add s: cameos, radios, duos. Syllable-final long o is found in coaxial, cloaca, oasis (compare coax, cloak, oats), poet, coerce, coeval, etc. (2) The same sound occurs word-finally as -oe in the monosyllables doe, foe, floe, hoe, sloe, throe, woe and in some polysyllables (aloe, felloe, oboe), but shoe, canoe give -oe the value of long u. (3) Long o occurs as -oh in oh, doh, soh, as -ough in dough, though (but not other -ough words), and as -ow as in some 14 words: how, blow, crow, know, low, mow, row, show, slow, snow, sow, stow, tow, throw. Of these, the forms bow, row, sow have different meanings (that is, are different words) when they rhyme with how. (4) The long -o value of the -ow ending occurs in disyllables of mainly vernacular origin, after d (meadow, shadow, widow), after ll (gallows, swallow; bellow, yellow; billow, willow; follow, hollow), after nn (minnow, winnow), and after rr (arrow, barrow; borrow, sorrow; burrow, furrow); and also in window (from a Scandinavian compound of wind + eye) and bungalow (from Hindi). (5) The diphthong value of final -ow (now, vow) is rare in polysyllables: allow, endow. (6) Some FRENCH loans have a final silent consonant after long o: apropos, depot. (7) Final long o may become i in the plural of ITALIAN loans: libretto/libretti, virtuoso/virtuosi.

Pre-consonantal long O
(1) Simple o before ld (bold, cold), 1st (bolster, holster), It (bolt, molten), ll (stroll, troll), lk (folk, yolk). Sometimes also before final st, th (ghost, most, past; both, sloth, but contrast short o in lost, cloth, etc.). The anomalous long o in only contrasts with the related forms one, alone, lonely, which all have following e; however, a parallel may be seen in nobly. (2) Before a single consonant, with a following a or a magic e after the consonant: soap, choke. (3) Digraphs ou and ow often before l or n (boulder, poultry, shoulder, smoulder; bowl, own, sown), but contrast the diphthong value in howl, down and the more usual vowel spellings in foal, sole, loan, tone. Before r in RP, this value becomes that of or in course, court, source. (4) Uniquely as oo in brooch (contrast broach).

O with the value of U
(1) The letter o often has one of the values of u, phonetically central and short as in but, close and short as in put, or close and long as in truth. (2) The short u-value is common in monosyllables, especially before n (son, front, monk, month, sponge, ton, tongue, won), and in some words with silent e (some, come, done, none, love, dove). One, once contain the further anomaly of an unspelt initial /w/. The short u-value is heard before nasals, l, r, th, v, and z in such polysyllabic words as above, accomplish, among, BrE borough, brother, colour, comfort, conjure, cover, dozen, dromedary, frontier, govern, Monday, money, mongrel, monkey, mother, nothing, onion, other, shovel, slovenly, smother, somersault, stomach, wonder. Pronunciation varies, however: Coventry, constable occur in BrE with both short o and u values. This use of o for short u has been explained as a graphic device in MIDDLE ENGLISH to reduce the confusing succession of vertical strokes (minims) that would otherwise arise in manuscript in a word such as money. (3) Longer (close) values of u, as in put or truth, occur: with simple o, in do, to, two, who, lasso; with o before a consonant plus e, in lose, whose, move, prove (contrast choose, booze, use, hose, drove); with oe in shoe, canoe; in such special cases as bosom, Domesday, tomb, whom, wolf, woman (but o with the value of short i in the plural women), womb.

O and the inflections of DO
The forms of do are highly anomalous: the long-u value of o in do, the short-u value in does (contrast the plural of doe), and the long-o value of don't, matching won't.

O with doubled consonants
When followed by doubled consonants, o often has a short value, but before double l, whether final or medial, both values occur: doll, loll, but poll, roll; dolly, follow, but swollen, wholly. Doubled l in holly distinguishes its short o from the long o in holy. Many words are pronounced with a short o preceding a single consonant, despite parallels with doubled consonants (body/shoddy, proper/copper) or with long vowels (honey/phoney, hover/rover). Other examples of single consonants after short o include colour, holiday, honour, honest, money. On the other hand, doubled r distinguishes short o in sorry, lorry from longer o in story, gory, though not in historical.

Digraphs
O is the first element in the following digraphs:

OA
The digraph oa has the values of: (1) Long o as in no (soap, cloak). (2) The open aw-sound before r in RP and related accents (coarse, hoarse).

OE
The digraph oe has the value of long o as in no (woe, woeful), or of ee in such Greek-derived forms as BrE amoeba, foetus, or of the first o in colonel in such German names as Goethe and Goebbels.

OI and OY
(1) The digraphs oi and (usually as a word- or syllable-final variant) oy are diphthongs: short o preceding short i, as in boil, boy. They are common in monosyllables and incorporate a glide before a vowel at a syllable boundary: join, noise, voice, oyster, royal, voyage, buoyant. (2) Rare final oi occurs in borzoi (from Russian) and envoi (Anglicized from French). (3) Special occurrences include: porpoise, tortoise with oi often reduced to schwa; a unique use in choir (rhyming with friar and wire and respelt from quire); in recent French loans, the value of /wa/ (boudoir, reservoir). (4) The oi combination is not always a digraph: compare coin/coincide.

OO
(1) The digraph oo is generally considered to have the value of long u as in rule (booty, choose), but with variation depending on accent. Exceptionally, it has the value of short u in blood, flood. (2) In RP and related accents, oo in some words is long u as in truth (food, soon), but elsewhere has the shorter u of put (good, hood) especially before k (book, cook, look). In room, both values occur in free variation. Similar variations occur before r: door, floor, moor, poor. (3) The form too developed in the 16c as a stressed variant of to; GERMAN has zu for both senses. (4) Occasionally, oo corresponds to French ou (contrast cognate troop/troupe), and -oon to French -on (balloon/ballon). (5) A few oo words are exotic: bamboo (probably Malay), typhoon (Chinese), taboo (Tongan). The digraph formerly occurred in Hindoo, now Hindu, and the alternative tabu exists for taboo. (6) Zoo is a clipping of zoological garden, but uniquely in zoology the second o functions simultaneously as part of the oo digraph and as a normal short o. (7) Oo becomes ee in the plural of foot, goose, tooth: feet, geese, teeth.

OU and OW
(1) The digraphs ou and (usually its word-final variant) ow can represent a diphthong, as in cow, cloud, flour, flower. Word-final ou occurs exceptionally in archaic thou, but ow is sometimes used medially. It is contrastive in foul/fowl, and is an alternative spelling in to lour/lower and formerly in flour/flower. (2) Ou has other values, as in soul (rhyming with pole), sought (with bought), source (with course), soup (with loop), scourge (with urge), and touch (with hutch and much). See U. (3) Final -ow as long o in know occurs in some 50 words as compared to some 15 with final -ow as in bow, brow, cow, dhow, how, now, AmE plow, prow, row, sow, vow, wow, allow, endow. (4) On its own, the form wound is ambiguous: the past tense of to wind has the standard diphthong value, but the noun has the value of ou in soup. (5) Exceptionally, ow has the value of short o in knowledge, acknowledge. (6) Ou becomes plural i in the plurals of such pairs as louse/lice, mouse/mice.

-OUGH
(1) Some -ough spellings have the standard value of ou (bough, drought, BrE plough). Variants are AmE plow and archaic enow, which was an alternative pronunciation of enough. (2) Other -ough spellings give o different values: short o in cough, trough; in RP, the aw sound in ought, bought; long o in though; schwa in thorough, borough in BrE, sometimes long o in AmE; and silent o in tough, rough, through.

O and schwa
(1) Unstressed o may be more or less reduced to the value of SCHWA, or elided altogether. In pronunciations of the word police, the full range can be heard, from long o, through short o and schwa, to zero value with initial consonants as in please. (2) There is also often variation between AmE, in which the o in omit, cocaine, testimony, territory, phenomenon (second o) may have one of its full values, and BrE where it is normally reduced. (3) Most typically, o (like other vowel letters) has the value of schwa after the main stress in polysyllables, especially in words ending in l (petrol, symbol), m (fathom, bottom), n (cotton; cushion, fashion; ration, and -ation words generally), r (error, doctor). (4) Homophones sometimes occur as a result of such reduction: baron/barren, gambol/gamble, petrol/petrel, lesson/lessen, minor/miner.

O and stress shift
In polysyllabic derivatives, the value of o may shift between long, short, and schwa (in unstressed position), as the spoken structure of the word changes: (1) Atom has schwa for its o, but in atomic has the short-o value. (2) Colony has the short-o value for its first o, schwa for its second, but colonial has schwa for its first o and the long-o value for its second. Such effects occur before suffixes like -(i)al, -ic(al), -y, -ety, as in colony/colonial; atom/atomic; economy/economic(al); symbol/symbolic; tone/tonic; geology/geological; photograph/photographer/photographic; proper/propriety; social/society. See SUFFIX.

Agentive -or/-er
The suffix -or is mostly used with Latin roots (doctor, professor), especially after verbs ending in -ate (dictator, perpetrator). It is normally pronounced with schwa, although occasionally the full value of -or is heard: actor, vendor. However, -or varies with -er in a number of patterns. BrE legal spelling may use -or where lay writing has -er: grantor/granter. A technical device may be distinguished by -or from a human agent with -er: adaptor/adapter, conveyor/conveyer. In other cases, -or and -er are in free variation: advisor/adviser, impostor/imposter, investor/invester. Caster/castor sometimes differ in meaning, and censor/censer always do.

Silent O
(1) In jeopardy, Leonard, leopard, people, but the o in yeoman has long value and the e is silent. (2) The second o in colonel.

American and British differences
(1) The once widespread unstressed ending -our (as in emperour) has since the early 19c been increasingly rewritten -or: universally in emperor, governor, horror, terror, and in AmE in such forms as ardor, behavior, candor, dolor, endeavor, favor, harbor, labor, odor, parlor, rigor, savior, vapor. Glamour and saviour are, however, still widely written with -our in AmE. AmE has o in all derivatives, while BrE has o alone in many (honorary, vaporise, vigorous), but not all (behaviourism, favourite, honourable, colourist). In many rarer forms, such as torpor and stupor, -or is universal. (2) AmE writes BrE amoeba, foetus, oesophagus, moustache without the o and manoeuvre as maneuver (but note the common spellings onomatopoeia, subpoena). (3) Contrast AmE mold, molt, smolder, BrE mould, moult, smoulder. (4) AmE has plow for BrE plough.




How to cite this entry:
"O" Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language. Ed. Tom McArthur. Oxford University Press, 1998. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Pellissippi State Technical CC. 28 February 2010

The Letter U

אנכי יהוה אלהים ***את

I AM YHUH ELOHIM
Gen [Beresheeth] 1

Barauch Ha Shem Yahusha יהושע Our Sovereign Redeemer! For He is the First and The Last, The Beginning and The End, The Aleph and The Tau.

HA SHEM יהוה should never have been changed!
***את Aleph א and Tav ת In Judaism is not spoken
It is the 1st commandment.

HalleuYah!

Hebrew Alphabet

Semitic Hebrew Aramaic Alphabet

So the generations from Abraham to Dau'd [Paleo-Hebrew Language "Y" "I"] were fourteen generations and from Dau'd until the exile to Babel were fourteen generation [Modern Hebrew Language "U"] and from the exile to Babel until the Messiah were fourteen generations. MattheYahu 1:17

                                                                    EUEI YEhovEh

'I=IE, The Y is the nail scarredhand
The E is for you or I being given from YHVH

The U is that, which, and; asher
The E is to receive...

Predestination for the uncircumcised in heart

Surprising Chronological study of the Messiah's language and "Modern" Hebrew "V" and "W". The Messiah never heard of the name of Yahweh! The W was adopted in 1300's AD not BC and *** "HA SHEM" "ELOHIM" not given PROPER recognition probably because the US government doesn't want to give up everything they gained with the paganism after the Revolutionary war. Cherokee Indian's used *** "HAYAH" in their worship!

There's not a W in the ancient Hebrew, either. W (double you)

The double "VV" "W" started being used around 1300AD (of Persian origin); "Y" "I" is the ancestor of U, YOU, or Uau.

This is still monotheistic or does it get polytheistic? (paganism joke)

WWJD?
HaYah

For the entire Torah is completed in one word, in this,
"You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Galatians 5:14

Praise Yah is a pure form of worship meaning HalleuYah

For the Son has the Father's name.

יהוה
"We all cry Abba Father"
There's only one of "you" of the Shema. Debarim 6:4
Yahuah only sent one son Yahusha ben Yosef ben Da'id.
I was given the understanding that the spelling is to be reverenced.
***את is for like Selah (meditation) and to be highly respected because of Abba's love for of all nationalities!

Referenced Ha Shem Yahuah

***את is not translated in the Zonderman's Bible that I have.
***את Aleph א and Tav: ת In Judaism

Tav ת is the last letter of the Hebrew word emet, which means truth. The midrash explains that emet is made up of the first, middle, and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet (Aleph א , Mem מ, and Tav: אמת). Sheqer (falsehood), on the other hand, is made up of the 19th, 20th, and 21st (and penultimate) letters.

Thus, truth is all-encompassing, while falsehood is narrow and deceiving. In Jewish mythology it was the word emet that was carved into the head of the Golem which ultimately gave it life. But when the letter "aleph" was erased from the Golem's forehead, what was left was "met"—death. And so the Golem died.

Ezekiel 9:4 depicts a vision in which the Tav plays a Passover role similar to the blood on the lintel and doorposts of a Hebrew home in Egypt.[1]
In Ezekiel’s Old Testament vision, יהוה has his angels separate the demographic wheat from the chaff by going through Jerusalem, the capital city of ancient Israel, and inscribing a mark, a Tav, “upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.”

In Ezekiel's vision, then, יהוה is counting Tav Israelites as worthwhile to spare, but counts the people worthy of annihilation who lack the Tav and the critical attitude it signifies. In other words, looking askance at a culture marked by dire moral decline is a kind of shibboleth for loyalty and zeal for יהוה.

Sayings with Taf

"From Aleph to Taf" describes something from beginning to end; the Hebrew equivalent of the English "From A to Z".

The alphabet here is Modern Hebrew!
Not Paleo Hebrew, Not Ancient Hebrew, but Modern Hebrew!

“Oh, Yes! Oh, Yes! I'm a Child of the King Yahusha!" and "There’s just something about that name…” In our English-speaking world we have been taught that the saving name of the Redeemer of Israel is “Jesus.” So accepted is this name that few stop to consider its authenticity.

But the truth is, there is indeed “something about that Name.” That “something” is the inescapable fact that the Savior’s name is not Jesus, and never was. What’s more, the Name of the Heavenly Father is not Jehovah, a designation that is only five centuries old.

Ch-rchianity has so thoroughly immersed the world in the error of this tradition for the past 500 years that few even think to research the matter or to consider the consequences of calling on the wrong name. As a result, most continue believing that the Hebrew Savior is called by a Latinized Greek name that could not possibly have existed at the time He walked the earth. It’s a name that would have been completely foreign to Him.

Eminent French historian, scholar, and archaeologist Ernest Renan acknowledges that the Savior was never in His lifetime called “Jesus.” In his book, The Life of Jesus, Renan doubts that the Savior even spoke Greek (p.90). Greek was mostly the language of business and commerce in cosmopolitan circles.

As for the Father’s Name, the hybrid “Jehovah” came into existence through the ignorance of Christian writers who did not understand the Old Testament Hebrew. Credit for the error is given to Petrus Galatinus, confessor to Pope Leo X in the 16th century.₁

The Etymology exposed, or rather the chronological study of the history, of the letters U,V,O,W, and of course the letter J, is my understanding of how the letter U was originally in the name of Jehovah, not the O or the V or the W. Come Out of her, My People!

Inspired by Fossilized Customs.₂ and Rabbi and Mrs. Weiner Israelites of The Congregation of Shomair Yisrael₃

I hope this helps someone.

HaYah: I AM
Exodus 3:14

"I Am" "Is" "Was" or "Will Be" is not in the Masoretic Text!

"I Am" was substituted instead of "HaYah"
Old Testament and the New Testament, as well!
Now then, How 'bout those Cherokees!

The Modern Hebrew was not around at the time the Ten Commandments were written. It was transliterated "U" with the Persian Language

The "W" wasn't used until around 1300 AD!

U, u [Called ‘you’]

The 21st LETTER of the Roman ALPHABET as used for English. It originated in the Phoenician consonant symbol waw, the common ancestor of the letters F, U, V, W, Y. The Greeks adopted waw as upsilon (, lower case ), which the Romans took from the Etruscans as V. The distinction in English between u as vowel and v as consonant was not made consistently in print until the 17c. Previously, the distinction tended to be positional, not phonological, with v used word-initially and u medially: vnder, liue. Until the 19c, some dictionaries listed u and v together rather than successively, or v before u in the alphabet. The use of V for U has survived into the 20c for some lapidary inscriptions: the BBC's Bush House in London has BVSH HOVSE carved over the entrance.

Sound values
(1) Formerly, the common feature in the pronunciation of u, v, w, was lip movement: lip-rounding is a feature of the back vowel in put and truth and the front vowel in French tu; /v/ is a labio-dental consonant; /w/ is a labial semi-vowel. In Modern English, French u has been Anglicized as a diphthong with a preceding i-glide (music, argue) and u commonly represents /w/ before a vowel after g, q, and s (anguish, quiet, persuade). (2) Beside these traditional values of u, most English accents have a further value. By the 17c, a vowel shift in southern England had changed the put-value of u in many words to a new sound, now heard in most accents, but not in the accents of the English Midlands and North. This is the value of u in but (except for the North of England), which today no longer rhymes with put and involves no lip-rounding. (3) In general pronunciation, the letter u spells four distinct vowel sounds, as in but, put, truth, music, as well as the /w/ in quiet, etc. The four vowel sounds will be referred to below as the values but-u, put-u, truth-u, music-u.

Long and short U
The four vowel values can be grouped into long and short pairs: but-u and put-u are short, truth-u and music-u are long. Like the long and short values of the other vowel letters, short and long u alternate in related words: assumption/assume, humble/humility, judge/judicious, number/numerous, punish/punitive, reduction/reduce, study/student.

Variation in values
The four values are not consistently distinguished. ScoE typically does not distinguish put-u and truth-u, and AmE often gives a truth-u to words pronounced with music-u in RP: AmE duty rhyming with booty, RP duty rhyming with beauty. This change occurs only after alveolar consonants: /d, l, n, r, s, t/. Because the but/put split did not take place in the Midlands and North of England, but/put rhyme in the accents of these regions. This non-distinction of but-u and put-u has often been stigmatized as non-standard, while their occasional reversal (butcher being pronounced with but-u rather than put-u) is considered to be hypercorrection towards RP. Variation between truth-u and music-u is not always regional, the distinction generally being blurred after l, s, as when lute/loot may or may not be pronounced as homophones, and sue/suit may in BrE have either long value of u. Although four possible vowel values in many accents make u a complex letter (with division into short and long realizations, and with variation between these values), a particular value is generally apparent from the environment. U is normally short except syllable-finally, and truth-u only arises after certain consonants.

Other spellings
The values of u have common alternative spellings. As a result of vowel shifts or spelling changes, patterns have arisen with the sound values of u in but, put, truth, but using o (son, wolf, do, move), or oe (does, shoes), or oo (blood, good, food), or ou (touch, could, youth). Similarly the sound of long u is commonly spelt ew (crew, dew, few, newt, pewter, steward); arguably w should be seen here as a positional variant of u (compare few/feud).

But-U (short)
Short u occurs before final consonants and (usually multiple) medial consonants: initial u in words of Old English origin (udder, ugly, under, up, us, utter, and the negative prefix un- as in unborn, uneventful); before two consonants in some non-English words (ulcer, ultimate, umbilical, umpire); in monosyllables ending in a consonant letter (tub, bud, cuff, mug, luck, cull, bulk, hum, sun, bunk, cup, bus, just, hut); in short-vowel monosyllables ending in silent e (budge, bulge, plunge). A few monosyllables contain put-u (see below), and the truth-u in truth itself (and also in Ruth) is an exception. In polysyllables, but-u usually precedes two consonants, either doubled (rubble, bucket, rudder, suffer, nugget, sullen, summer, supple, hurry, russet, butter) or as a string (publish, indulgent, number, abundant). Words ending in -ion similarly have short u before two consonants: percussion, convulsion, compunction, destruction, assumption, but long u before a single consonant in confusion, evolution. Exceptions to these patterns include long u in duplicate, lucrative, rubric and as indicated by final magic e in scruple (contrast short ou in couple); short u before a single consonant in study (contrast muddy, Judy) and in bunion (contrast trunnion, union).

Put-U (short)
The lip-rounded put-u occurs in a few words, especially after the labial consonants b, p, and before l: bull, bullet, bulletin, bullion, bully, bush, bushel, butcher, cuckoo, cushion, full, pudding, pull, pullet, pulley, pulpit, push, puss, put, sugar. Muslim is heard with both but-u and put-u. Put-u is nevertheless not a rare sound in English, being also spelt ou in the common could, would, should, and frequently oo, as in foot, good.

Truth-U and Music-U (long)
Long u (whether, truth-u or music-u) occurs in polysyllables before a single consonant with following vowel: contrast fundamental/funeral and the patterns in cucumber, undulate. Long u occurs in: alluvial, deputy, educate, fury, ludicrous, lunar, peculiar, refusal, ruby, rufous, ruminate, superb. In final closed syllables, long u is usually shown by magic (lengthening) e: amuse, flute, fume, huge, prelude, puce, puke, pure, refute, rude, rule, ruse, tube, tune. In accordance with the above patterns, the monosyllabic prefix sub- has but-u (subject), but disyllabic super- has long u. In most circumstances, long u is music-u, the initial i-glide being assimilated to produce truth-u only after certain consonants. Music-u is therefore found word-initially before a single consonant, especially in derivations from the Latin root unus (one), as in unicorn, unify, union, unity, universe. Other cases include ubiquitous, urine, use, utility, Music-u follows consonants as in ambulance, acute, confuse, coagulate, music, annual, compute, enthuse, revue, and in RP but commonly not in AmE as in duke, tube. Both music-u and truth-u are heard after l, s (lute, suit). Truth-u occurs after r, sh (includingt the affricate j) and is explicit in yu: truth, prune, Shute, chute, Schubert, June, jury, yule. In an unstressed medial syllable, ‘long’ music-u tends in fact to be a rather short vowel: contrast deputy, educate with dispute, duke.

Final U
Syllable-final u is pronounced long. Word-finally, it has an additional silent e in long-established English words (argue, continue, due, rue), although this commonly disappears before suffixes (argue/argument, continue/continual, due/duty, true/truth). Final u occurs without following e, particularly in recently formed or borrowed words: emu, flu, guru, Hindu, jujitsu, menu. Long u also arises syllable-finally before a vowel (contrast annul, annual): dual, suet, fluid, fluoride, vacuum.

U before R
Before r with no following vowel, RP gives u the same value as e or i before r: fur, hurt, nurse, absurd, purchase, concur (compare her, sir). When a vowel follows, u is long (rural, bureau, during), but is modified with the hint of an inserted schwa (cure, pure, endure; rural, bureau, during). Like other multiple consonants, rr normally induces a preceding but-u: burrow, current, flurry, furrier (noun): but the adjective furry retains the value of u of its base form fur, and its comparative furrier is then a homograph of the noun furrier with its but-u.

U and schwa
Like all vowel letters in English, u when unstressed in fluent speech may lose distinctive value, being reduced to SCHWA: initially (until, upon), before a stressed syllable (suggest, surround), and after the main stress especially before l, m, n, r, s (medially, as in faculty, calumny, voluntary, Saturday, industry, and in final syllables awful, difficult, autumn, album, minimum, museum, tedium, vacuum, murmur, injure, circus, radius). In some words, u is reduced to schwa while retaining the preceding i-glide of music-u: century, failure. In lettuce and in the noun minute, u is commonly reduced to schwa, and in RP to the value of short i. The adjective minute has music-u.

Assimilation
Phonetically, music-u is a diphthong consisting of a glide i-sound followed by truth-u, but in fluent speech the glide often affects the value of a preceding consonant, sometimes being assimilated with it entirely, as when duty, tune are spoken as ‘jooty’, ‘choon’ (typically not in North America), and casual, picture are spoken as ‘kazhel’, ‘pikcher’. Such assimilation is usual before the suffixes -ual, -ure after d, s, t, z: gradual, casual, mutual; verdure, closure, picture, azure. The assimilation with initial s in sugar, sure is of such long standing that the s is perceived as having an abnormal value. For some speakers, the tendency extends to assume and presume spoken as ‘ashoom’, ‘prezhoom’.

Semi-vowel U
(1) vowel occurs commonly in words of FRENCH derivation and typically after g (distinguish, guava, language, sanguine), q (quash, quail, quest, quit, quiet, quote, acquaint, equal, loquacious), and s (suave, suede, suite, persuade). (2) In similar contexts, however, u may have its full vowel value: contrast suite/suicide. (3) Some words with initial qu are of OLD ENGLISH origin, having changed their spelling after the Norman Conquest from cw- to qu-: cwen, cwic now written queen, quick.

Silent U
(1) Especially in words of French derivation: after g (where it serves to distinguish hard and soft g: page/vague), as in vague, fatigue, vogue, fugue, and after q, as in opaque, technique, mosquito. (2) In initial qu (quay, queue) and in conquer and often languor, although pronounced /w/ in conquest, languid. (3) Elsewhere, u is inserted only to preserve the hard value of preceding g: Portugal/Portuguese (see G, Q). (4) Although apparently part of a digraph, u is effectively silent in gauge, aunt, laugh, BrE draught (compare AmE draft), build, cough, trough, though, BrE mould, moult, smoulder (compare AmE mold, molt, smolder), boulder, shoulder, soul, buoy (especially BrE), buy. Although u is silent in biscuit, circuit, it arguably indicates preceding hard c (contrast explicit). It is optionally silent in conduit.

Digraphs
U often has the secondary function of indicating a modified value for a preceding letter. For the digraph au (as in taut) and ou (as in out), see A, O respectively. Eau in beauty has the value of music-u. For final eau (bureau, etc.), see E. The main digraphs having one of the four sound values of u are:

EU. (1) The digraph eu regularly represents music-u, especially in words of GREEK derivation (Europe, eulogy, pseudo-, neurotic), but occasionally elsewhere (feud). (2) In sleuth, the eu represents truth-u, as does oeu in BrE manoeuvre (AmE maneuver).

OU. (1) The digraph ou has one of the values of u, except when it is used as a standard digraph for the diphthong in out and for long o as in soul. See O. The spelling ou sometimes derives from French, and sometimes represents earlier pronunciation with a long vowel. (2) It represents but-u as in country, couple, cousin, double, southern, touch, trouble, young, with following /f/ spelt-gh as in enough, rough, tough, and in BrE courage, flourish, nourish, AmE giving this -our- the value as in journey. (3) It represents put-u in could, should, would and truth-u in ghoul, group, soup, through, uncouth, wound (noun), youth and also in such recent French loans as boulevard, bouquet, coup, BrE route (in AmE often homophonous with rout), souvenir, tour, trousseau. (4) It represents modified u before r: courteous, courtesy (compare cognate curts[e]y), journal (cognate diurnal), journey, scourge (compare urge) .


UE, UI. The combinations ue and ui usually indicate long u: Tuesday, juice, sluice, bruise, nuisance, cruise, fruit, suit, pursuit, recruit. The i is redundant when the word already ends in e: compare reduce/juice, ruse/bruise. In the verbs related to suit, pursuit, the i is replaced by e: sue, pursue.

Variations
(1) Historically, there has been variation of spelling and pronunciation, especially between u and o: in the cognates custom/costume, ton/tun, tone/tune. See O. One factor may have been a need to distinguish the vertical strokes or minims of u from the vertical strokes of adjacent letters in MIDDLE ENGLISH manuscripts; hence Middle English sone rather than sune for Old English sunu and Modern English son. (2) Similarly, w may sometimes have been used to avoid confusion of u/v (contrast coward/cover and French couard), or to distinguish homophones (foul/fowl), or even meanings of the ‘same’ word, such as the recent differentiation of flour/flower. (3) In general, ou occurs medially (house, though) and ow more often finally (how, throw), before vowels (tower), and before l (howl, bowl), n (clown, sown), and d (crowd). However, the choice between ou, ow is often arbitrary, as in the cognates noun/renown. (4) For AmE -or, BrE -our, see o. (5) The number four loses u in the derivative forty, though not in fourteen. See CLASSICAL ENDING,V, W. ₄

"I'm monotheistic.


Works Cited:

¹Yahweh's Assembly in Yahshua http://www.yaiy.org/literature/sacredname.html
²Fossilized Customs by Lew White of http://torahzone.net/
³Rabbi and Mrs Mike Weiner Israelites of http://www.shomairyisrael.com/
⁴"U" Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language. Ed. Tom McArthur. Oxford University Press, 1998. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Pellissippi State Technical CC. 28 February 2010
Supported by The Rockefeller Foundations

Links
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J and W

There are not any J's or W's in Hebrew₁

to be cont...
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance is almost a necessity for gaining a deeper insight into the original languages. Notice in the Hebrew dictionary of Strong's No. 3050, the entry "Yahh," a contraction for 3068 [the Tetragrammaton, the Sacred Name].

"Yah" is found in HalleluYah, meaning "praise you Yah." Also it appears in names like Matthew: MatthewYah, Isaiah: IsaYah, Jeremiah: JeremYah, Zephaniah: ZephanYAH, Nehemiah: NehemYAH, and other names ending in "iah." Yah means "I exist," "I am," "I create," or "I will be or bring into being."

Yah is the poetic or short form of His Name found to have survived translators in Psalm 68:4 of the King James Version. It is the prefix of the name Jehovah as found in Strong's Exhaustive Concordance which is most interesting and shows the fallacy of the name Jehovah.₂

J

The symbol (from the German Jahvist; Yahwist in English) used by German OT scholars and followed internationally to denote one of the sources of the Pentateuch, which uses Yahweh for the name of God. It was probably written in the south of the country in the 10th (or 9th) cent. BCE, though a few recent OT scholars think it might even be post-exilic. J is characterized by anthropomorphisms (e.g. Gen. 8: 21) but above all records the faithfulness of God to the promises he made to the patriarchs.
"J" A Dictionary of the Bible. W. R. F. Browning. Oxford University Press, 1997. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 25 May 2008

Other References

W

23rd letter of the English alphabet and a letter included the alphabets of in several W European languages. Like f, u, v and y, it was derived from the Semitic letter vaw (a name meaning hook). The Greeks adopted vaw into their alphabet as upsilon. The Romans made two letters out of upsilon Y and V (see V; Y). The V was first pronounced as a modern English w and later as a modern English v. Norman-French writers of the 11th century created the modern form of the letter by doubling a u or v to represent the Anglo-Saxon letter wynn, which had no counterpart in their alphabet. In modern English w is what phoneticians call a lip-rounded velar semivowel, made like the oo vowel sound in zoo but functioning as a consonant, as in war and swing. Like y, it sometimes has a vowel quality, but usually only when used with another vowel as in new, now or flow. It is silent in such words as answer and wring (words in which it was originally pronounced). In some words introduced by the combination wh, the w is today not sounded (as in who, whom and whore). But in which, what, white and whisk, a voiceless form of w is used. However, in some dialects of English, and all of those in England, this voiceless w is regularly being replaced by ordinary w.
"W" World Encyclopedia. Philip's, 2005. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 25 May 2008

W, w

[Called double-you]. The 23rd LETTER of the modern Roman ALPHABET as used for English. The Romans had no letter suitable for representing the phoneme /w/, as in OLD ENGLISH, although phonetically the vowel represented by v (as in veni, vidi, vici) was close. In the 7c, scribes wrote uu for /w/, but from the 8c they commonly preferred for English the runic symbol wynn ([wynn]). Meanwhile, uu was adopted for /w/ in continental Europe, and after the Norman Conquest in 1066 it was introduced to English as the ligatured w, which by 1300 had replaced wynn. Early printers sometimes used vv for lack of a w in their type. The name double-u for double v (French double-v) recalls the former identity of u and v, though that is also evident in the cognates flour/flower, guard/ward, suede/Swede, and the tendency for u, w to alternate in digraphs according to position: maw/maul, now/noun.Sound value In English, w normally represents a voiced bilabial semi-vowel, produced by rounding and then opening the lips before a full vowel, whose value may be affected.Vowel digraphs (1) The letter w commonly alternates with u in digraphs after a, e, o to represent three major phonemes. Forms with u typically precede a consonant, with aw, ew, ow preferred syllable finally: law, saw, taut; dew, new, feud; cow, how loud. (2) When the preceding vowel opens a mono-syllable, silent e follows the w: awe, ewe, owe (but note awful, ewer, owing). (3) Word-finally, w is almost always preferred to u (thou is a rare exception), but w occurs medially quite often (tawdry, newt, vowel, powder), and the choice of letter may be arbitrary (compare lour/lower, flour/flower, noun/renown). (4) In some words, digraphs with w have non-standard values: sew, knowledge, low. Final -ow with its non-standard value in low occurs in nearly four times as many words as the standard value in how. (5) In the name Cowper, ow is uniquely pronounced as oo in Cooper. (6) Final w in many disyllables evolved from the Old English letter yogh () for g, as in gallows, hallow, tallow, bellows, follow, harrow, borrow, morrow, sorrow, furrow (compare German Galgen, heiligen, Talg, Balg, folgen, Harke, borgen, Morgen, Sorge, Furche).
"W" Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language. Ed. Tom McArthur. Oxford University Press, 1998. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 25 May 2008

Works Cited

¹Quoted: 1997 Mrs. Michael (Ann) Weiner The Congregation of Shomair Yisrael http://shomairyisrael.com

² 2007 Yahweh’s Assembly in Yahshua
www.YAIY.org

Oxford University Press, 1998. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 25 May 2008
Supported by The Rockefeller Foundations