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'I' or 'Y' ('И', 'и') is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet, representing in Russian and in Ukrainian. It is derived from the Greek letter eta (''Η, η'' representing in Ancient Greek and in Modern Greek).

Contents

Origins

Usage

Shape

See Also

Origins

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''.

Usage

It is the tenth letter of the Russian alphabet, and in Russian it represents , like the ''i'' in mach'i'ne. Although in isolation it is not preceded by the semivowel like other "soft" vowels ('е', 'ё', 'ю', and 'я'), in Russian it is considered the soft counterpart to 'ы', which represents , because it denotes a preceding soft consonant. In Ukrainian and Belarusian, the sound is represented by the letter 'і', sometimes called ''Ukrainian I''.
The letter и is the eleventh letter of the Ukrainian alphabet.
Belarusian has dispensed entirely with the letter и.
With a breve, it forms the letter 'й', called ''I kratkoye'' ("short I") in Russian, similarly ''I kratko'' in Bulgarian, or ''Yot'' in Ukrainian and it represents the 'y' in English "bo'y'."
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 is not 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''.

See Also

★ Eta (letter)

★ Iota