Ü

Ü (minuscule: ü) is a Latin script character composed of the character U and the two dots diacritical mark. The meaning carried by the two dots varies depending on alphabet and context. In some alphabets, such as those of a number of Romance languages, it denotes the letter U with a diaeresis mark, used on a U that follows another vowel to indicate the two are part of separate syllables instead of being a digraph. In alphabets such as the Azerbaijani, Estonian, Hungarian and Turkish ones, Ü is a letter in its own right. In those cases it typically represents a close front rounded vowel [y] . In the German alphabet it is the umlauted form of the letter U. Although not a part of their alphabet, Ü also appears in languages such as Finnish and Swedish when retained in foreign proper names like München ("Munich"). A small number of Dutch and Afrikaans words employ the character to mark vowel hiatus (e.g. reünie (/reːyˈni/) 'reunion'), a loanword marked with diaeresis to suppress the native reading of eu as a digraph pronounced /øː/).