I is a letter used in almost all ancient and modern
Cyrillic alphabetThe Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
s.
It commonly represents the
close front unrounded vowelThe close front unrounded vowel, or high front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ....
/i/, like the pronunciation of ⟨i⟩ in "mach
ine", or the
near-close near-front unrounded vowel /ɪ/, like the pronunciation of ⟨i⟩ in "b
in".
History
The Cyrillic letter
I was derived from the
Greek letter EtaEta ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet. Originally denoting a consonant /h/, its sound value in the classical Attic dialect of Ancient Greek was a long vowel , raised to in medieval Greek, a process known as itacism.In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 8...
(Η η). This is why the earliest (up to the 13th century) shape of Cyrillic ⟨И⟩ was ⟨H⟩.
The name of the Cyrillic letter I in the
Early Cyrillic alphabetThe Early Cyrillic alphabet is a writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the 9th or 10th century to write the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language...
was (
iže), meaning "which".
In the
Cyrillic numeral systemThe Cyrillic numerals are a numbering system derived from the Cyrillic script, used by South and East Slavic peoples. The system was used in Russia as late as the early 18th century when Peter the Great replaced it with Arabic numerals....
, the Cyrillic letter I had a value of 8.
In the
Early Cyrillic alphabetThe Early Cyrillic alphabet is a writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the 9th or 10th century to write the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language...
there was little or no distinction between the letter ⟨И⟩ and the letter ⟨І⟩ which was derived from the
Greek letter IotaIota is the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 10. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Yodh . Letters that arose from this letter include the Roman I and J and the Cyrillic І , Yi , Je , and iotified letters .Iota represents...
(Ι ι). They both remained in the alphabetical repertoire because they represented different numbers in the Cyrillic numeral system, eight and ten, and are therefore sometimes referred to as
octal I and
decimal I. Today they co-exist in Church Slavonic (with no pronunciation difference) and in Ukrainian (representing actual pronunciation differences). Other modern orthographies for Slavic languages eliminated one of the two letters during alphabet reforms of the 19th or 20th centuries: Russian, Macedonian, Serbian and Bulgarian languages use only ⟨И⟩, whereas
BelarusianThe Belarusian language , sometimes referred to as White Russian or White Ruthenian, is the language of the Belarusian people...
uses only ⟨І⟩.
Form
Originally, Cyrillic ⟨И⟩ had the shape identical to the capital
Greek letter EtaEta ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet. Originally denoting a consonant /h/, its sound value in the classical Attic dialect of Ancient Greek was a long vowel , raised to in medieval Greek, a process known as itacism.In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 8...
⟨Η⟩. Later, the middle stroke was turned counterclockwise resulting in the modern form looking like a mirrored capital
Latin letter NN is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet...
⟨N⟩ (this is why ⟨И⟩ is used in
faux CyrillicFaux Cyrillic, pseudo-Cyrillic, pseudo-Russian or faux Russian typography is the use of Cyrillic letters in Latin text to evoke the Soviet Union or Russia, regardless of whether the letters are phonetic matches. For example, R and N in RUSSIAN may be replaced by Cyrillic Я and И, giving "ЯUSSIAИ"...
typography). But the style of the two letters is not fully identical: in roman fonts,
⟨И⟩ has heavier vertical strokes and serifs on all four corners, whereas
⟨N⟩ has a heavier diagonal stroke and lacks a serif on the bottom-right corner.
In roman and oblique fonts, the lowercase letter ⟨и⟩ has the same shape as the uppercase letter ⟨И⟩. In italic fonts, the lowercase letter ⟨
и⟩ looks like the italic form of the lowercase Latin U ⟨
u⟩. Both capital and small hand-written forms of the Cyrillic letter I look like hand-written forms of the Latin letter U.
Usage
Since the 1930s, ⟨и⟩ has been the tenth letter of the
Russian alphabetThe Russian alphabet is a form of the Cyrillic script, developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
, and in
RussianRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
it represents /i/, like the
i in mach
ine, except after some consonants (see below). In Russian ⟨и⟩ typically denotes a preceding
soft consonantIn linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
and therefore is considered the soft counterpart to ⟨
ыYery or Yeru is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. It represents the phoneme after non-palatalised consonants in the Belarusian and Russian alphabets...
⟩ (which represents [ɨ]) but, unlike other "soft" vowels (⟨
еE , also known as Backwards E from , E oborotnoye, is a letter found amongst Slavonic languages only in Russian and Belarusian, representing the sounds and...
⟩, ⟨
ёYo is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. In Unicode, the letter ⟨Ё⟩ is named CYRILLIC CAPITAL/SMALL LETTER IO.It commonly represents the sounds , like the pronunciation of ⟨Yo⟩ in "York"....
⟩, ⟨
юYu is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. After a palatalized consonant, it represents the close back rounded vowel , somewhat like the pronunciation of ⟨oo⟩ in "boot"; elsewhere it is a so-called iotated vowel representing the combination , like the pronunciation of ⟨you⟩ in "youth"...
⟩, and ⟨
яYa is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, the civil script variant of Old Cyrillic Little Yus . Among modern Slavonic languages it is used by Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian to represent both the combination in initial or post-vocalic position and after a palatalised consonant; in...
⟩), ⟨и⟩ in isolation is not preceded by the /j/ semivowel. ⟨И⟩ pronounced as [ɨ] in ⟨жи⟩ (sounds like ⟨жы⟩ [ʐɨ]), ⟨ши⟩ (sounds like ⟨шы⟩ [ʂɨ]) and ⟨ци⟩ (sounds like ⟨цы⟩ [t͡sɨ]), because in Russian the sound [i] after consonants “zh” ⟨ж⟩, “sh” ⟨ш⟩ and “ts” ⟨ц⟩ is inarticulable.
In
UkrainianUkrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
and
BelarusianThe Belarusian language , sometimes referred to as White Russian or White Ruthenian, is the language of the Belarusian people...
, the sound /i/ is represented by another letter ⟨
іDotted I , also called Decimal I, is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It commonly represents the close front unrounded vowel , like the pronunciation of ⟨i⟩ in "machine"....
⟩, sometimes called
Ukrainian I, removed from the modern Russian alphabet.
Ukrainian and Belarusian ⟨і⟩ sounds like Russian ⟨и⟩ [i],
but a clearly distinct sound ɪ is represented by ⟨и⟩ in Ukrainian, which only slightly differs from Russian ⟨ы⟩ and perceived as ⟨ы⟩ by a Russian speaker.
The letter ⟨и⟩ is the eleventh letter of the
Ukrainian alphabetThe Ukrainian alphabet is the set of letters used to write Ukrainian, the official language of Ukraine. It is one of the national variations of the Cyrillic script....
.
In cyrilic Serbian alphabet ⟨и⟩ is the tenth letter of the alphabet and in
SerbianSerbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
it represents /i/, like the
i in mach
ine or
i in b
ill. In latin Serbian alphabet the same vowel is represented by "I/i".
It is
transliteratedTransliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
from Russian as ⟨i⟩, or from Ukrainian as ⟨y⟩ or ⟨i⟩, depending on
romanizationIn linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...
systems. See
romanization of RussianRomanization of the Russian alphabet is the process of transliterating the Russian language from the Cyrillic alphabet into the Latin alphabet...
and
romanization of UkrainianThe romanization or Latinization of Ukrainian is the representation of the Ukrainian language using Latin letters. Ukrainian is natively written in its own Ukrainian alphabet, a variation of Cyrillic....
.
Accented forms and derived letters
The vowel represented by ⟨и⟩, as well as almost any other Slavonic vowel, can be stressed or unstressed. Stressed variants are sometimes (in special texts, like dictionaries, or to prevent ambiguity) graphically marked by
acuteThe acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
,
graveThe grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, French, Greek , Italian, Mohawk, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, Romansh, and other languages.-Greek:The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient...
,
double graveThe double grave accent is a diacritic used in scholarly discussions of the Serbo-Croatian and sometimes Slovene languages. It is also used in the International Phonetic Alphabet....
, or
circumflexThe circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...
accent marks.
Special Serbian texts also use ⟨и⟩ with a
macronA macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long or heavy syllable in Greco-Roman metrics, but now marks a long vowel...
to represent long unstressed variant of the sound. Serbian ⟨и⟩ with a circumflex can be unstressed as well; in this case, it represent the
genitive caseIn grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
of plural forms and is used to distinguish them from other similar forms.
Modern Church Slavonic orthography uses smooth breathing sign (Greek and Church Slavonic:
psili, Latin:
spiritus lenisThe smooth breathing is a diacritical mark used in polytonic orthography. In ancient Greek, it marks the absence of the voiceless glottal fricative from the beginning of a word....
) above the initial vowels (just for tradition, there is no difference in pronunciation). It can be combined with acute or grave accents, if necessary.
None of these above-mentioned combinations is considered as a separate letter of respective alphabet, but one of them (⟨⟩) has an individual code position in
UnicodeUnicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
.
⟨И⟩ with a
breveA breve is a diacritical mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. It resembles the caron , but is rounded, while the caron has a sharp tip...
forms the letter ⟨
йShort I is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. It is made of the Cyrillic letter И with a breve.Short I represents the palatal approximant , like the pronunciation of ⟨y⟩ in toy....
⟩ for the consonant /j/ or a similar semi-vowel, like the
y in English "
yes" or "bo
y." This form has been used regularly in Church Slavonic since the 16th century, but it officially became a separate letter of alphabet much later (In Russian, only in 1918). The original name of ⟨й⟩ was
I s kratkoy ('I with the short [line]'), later
I kratkoye ('short I') in
RussianRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, similarly
I kratko in
BulgarianBulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
, but
Yot in Ukrainian. For the details, see the article
Short IShort I is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. It is made of the Cyrillic letter И with a breve.Short I represents the palatal approximant , like the pronunciation of ⟨y⟩ in toy....
.
Cyrillic alphabets of non-Slavic languages have additional ⟨и⟩-based letters, like ⟨⟩ or ⟨⟩.
Related letters and other similar characters
- Η η : Greek letter Eta
- Ι ι : Greek letter Iota
- I i : Latin letter I
I is the ninth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:In Semitic, the letter may have originated in a hieroglyph for an arm that represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative in Egyptian, but was reassigned to by Semites, because their word for "arm" began with that sound...
- Й й : Cyrillic letter Short I
Computing codes
| character |
И |
и |
| Unicode name |
CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER I |
CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER I |
| character encoding |
decimal |
hex |
decimal |
hex |
UnicodeUnicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
|
1048 |
0418 |
1080 |
0438 |
| UTF-8 UTF-8 is a multibyte character encoding for Unicode. Like UTF-16 and UTF-32, UTF-8 can represent every character in the Unicode character set. Unlike them, it is backward-compatible with ASCII and avoids the complications of endianness and byte order marks...
|
208 152 |
D0 98 |
208 184 |
D0 B8 |
| Numeric character reference A numeric character reference is a common markup construct used in SGML and other SGML-related markup languages such as HTML and XML. It consists of a short sequence of characters that, in turn, represent a single character from the Universal Character Set of Unicode...
|
И |
И |
и |
и |
| KOI8-R KOI8-R is an 8-bit character encoding, designed to cover Russian, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet. It also happens to cover Bulgarian, but is not used since CP1251 is accepted. A derivative encoding is KOI8-U, which adds Ukrainian characters...
and KOI8-UKOI8-U is an 8-bit character encoding, designed to cover Ukrainian, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet. It is based on KOI8-R, which covers Russian and Bulgarian, but replaces eight graphic characters with four Ukrainian letters Ґ, Є, І, and Ї in both upper case and lower case.In Microsoft Windows,...
|
233 |
E9 |
201 |
C9 |
| Code page 855 Code page 855 is a code page used under MS-DOS to write Cyrillic script. This code page is not used much.-Code page layout:...
|
184 |
B8 |
183 |
B7 |
| Code page 866 Code page 866 is a code page used under MS-DOS to write Cyrillic script. It is based on the "alternative character set" of GOST 19768-87...
|
136 |
88 |
168 |
A8 |
| Windows-1251 Windows-1251 is a popular 8-bit character encoding, designed to cover languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet such as Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian Cyrillic and other languages...
|
200 |
C8 |
232 |
E8 |
| ISO-8859-5 |
184 |
B8 |
216 |
D8 |
| Macintosh Cyrillic |
136 |
88 |
232 |
E8 |