What is the long U sound?

Answer 1

The long U sound can be defined two ways. One is by the sound of its name, the YOO sound heard in unit, uniform, cute, mule, pupil, and human.

However, the U has a long OO sound in words such as dune, Flute, chute, fruit, and suit, which is the same sound heard in cool, moon, and tomb.

So the long U can be either a YOO or an OO, where the YOO is an OO with a consonant Y in front of it. The difficulty with making both of these the "long U" is that there are word pairs that have both sounds: cute/coot, mute/moot, feud/food, and fuel/fool. Most dictionaries do not use the ū sign for this reason.

Answer 2

The long U sound is a vowel sound that is typically pronounced like "yoo" or "oo." It is commonly found in words like "blue," "cute," and "unicorn."