Everything about I Cyrillic totally explained
I or
Y (
И,
и) is a letter of almost all ancient and modern
Cyrillic alphabets, representing typically /i/ (in Old Slavonic, Church Slavonic, Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Macedonian), or /ɪ/ (in Ukrainian, as well as in certain positions in modern Church Slavonic and in Russian).
Origins
И is derived from the
Greek letter
eta (
Η, η representing [ɛː] in
Ancient Greek and [i] in
Modern Greek). This is why the earliest (up to the 13th century) shape of Cyrillic И was H.
In the
early Cyrillic alphabet there was little or no distinction between the letters И
(izhe) and І
(i), descended from the Greek letters Η
(eta) and Ι
(iota). 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 (without phonetical difference) and in Ukrainian (with the phonetical difference). Other modern Slavonic orthographies eliminate one of the two letters during alphabet reforms of the 19th or 20th centuries: Russian, Macedonian, Serbian and Bulgarian languages use only И, whereas
Belarusian uses only І.
Usage
Since 1930s, И is the tenth letter of the
Russian alphabet, and in
Russian it represents /i/, like the
i in mach
ine. Although in isolation it isn't preceded by the /j/ semivowel like other "soft" vowels (
е,
ё,
ю, and
я), in Russian it's considered the soft counterpart to
ы, which represents [ɨ], because it typically denotes a preceding soft consonant. In
Ukrainian and
Belarusian, the sound /i/ is represented by the letter
і, sometimes called
Ukrainian I.
The letter и is the eleventh letter of the
Ukrainian alphabet.
It is
transliterated from Russian as
i, or from Ukrainian as
y or
i, using different
romanization systems. See
romanization of Russian and
romanization of Ukrainian.
Shape
Originally, Cyrillic
И, и had the shape identical to Greek uppercase
Η or Latin uppercase
H. Later, the middle stroke turned counterclockwise which made the modern form similar to the mirrored
Latin alphabet's capital
N (this is why
И is used in
faux Cyrillic typography). But style of the two letters isn't fully identical: in Roman-type fonts,
И has serifs on all four corners, whereas
N only on bottom-left and top-right ones; also,
И has (contrarily to
N) thicker vertical lines than the diagonal one. Lowercase
и in regular fonts has the same shape as uppercase
И. In italic (cursive) fonts, lowercase
и may look like Latin
u. In handwritten (calligraphic) fonts, both lower- and uppercase forms of
и have usually the shape of handwritten Latin lowercase
u.
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
acute,
grave,
double grave, or
circumflex accent marks.
Special Serbian texts also use и with a
macron to represent long unstressed variant of the sound. Serbian и with circumflex can be unstressed as well; in this case, it represent the
genitive case 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 lenis) above the initial vowels (just for tradition, with no phonetical meaning). 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 (
Ѝ) has individual code position in
Unicode.
И with a
breve forms the letter
й for the consonant /j/ or a similar semi-vowel, like the
y in English "
yes" or "bo
y." This form is regularly used in Church Slavonic since the 16th century, but it officially became a separate letter of alphabet much later (In Russian, only in 1918). Original name of й was
I s kratkoy ("I with the short [line]"), later
I kratkoye ("short I") in
Russian, similarly
I kratko in
Bulgarian, but
Yot in Ukrainian. For the details, see the article
Short I.
Cyrillic alphabets of non-slavic languages have additional и-based letters, like
Ӥ or
Ӣ.
Further Information
Get more info on 'I Cyrillic'.
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