ukirjaimen

Ukirjaimen is the Finnish name for the Latin letter U, a vowel in the Finnish alphabet. It represents the close back rounded vowel [u] and is used widely in both native Finnish words and loanwords. In the Finnish alphabet, U is the 21st letter; the standard alphabet includes A–Z plus Å, Ä and Ö.

In written Finnish, U appears in many common words, such as uima (to swim), uusin (newest), and kuulla (to hear). When doubled, as in uusi, it indicates vowel length, producing a longer [uː] sound. The letter also participates in Finnish vowel harmony, where suffix vowels harmonize with preceding back vowels (a, o, u) or front vowels (ä, ö, y, i, e) in word forms.

Historically, the Finnish alphabet adopted Latin characters, and U was introduced as part of that system. Its usage mirrors that of Latin-based alphabets in many languages, serving as both a word nucleus and a component in affixes and loanwords.

In digital text, U is encoded in Unicode as U+0055 for uppercase and U+0075 for lowercase, and it is represented in UTF-8 as the corresponding single-byte codes. This ensures consistent representation across programming languages, fonts, and computer systems.

See also: Finnish alphabet, Finnish orthography, vowel harmony.