Numeric value: 5 | ||
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Ukrainian Ye (Є є; italics: Є є) is a character of the Cyrillic script. It is considered as an individual letter of the modern Ukrainian alphabet (8th position since 1992, 7th position before then) and as a variant form of Ye (Е е) in modern Church Slavonic (there, the selection of Є and Е is driven by orthography rules). Until the mid-19th century, Є/є was also used in Serbian (the letter was eliminated in Vuk Karadžić's alphabet and replaced by digraph је). Other modern Slavonic languages may use Є/є shapes instead of Е/е for decorative purposes. Then, the letter is usually referred to by the older name Yest and the descriptive names long E or anchor E.
Contents
- History
- Ukrainian
- Old Slavonic Old East Slavic
- New Church Slavonic
- Similar characters
- Related letters and other similar characters
- References
In Ukrainian, Є/є commonly represents the sound /je/ or /jɛ/ like the pronunciation of ⟨ye⟩ in "yes". (See Usage for more detail.)
Ukrainian Ye is romanized as ⟨je⟩ or ⟨e⟩. See Scientific transliteration of Cyrillic.
History
Letter Є/є was derived from one of variant forms of Cyrillic Ye (Е е), known as "long E" or "anchor E". Є-shaped letter can be found in late uncial (ustav) and semi-uncial (poluustav) Cyrillic manuscripts, especially ones of Ukrainian origin. Typically it corresponds to the letter Iotated E (Ѥ ѥ) of older monuments. Certain old primers and grammar books of Church Slavonic language had listed Є/є as a letter distinct from Е/е and placed it near the end of the alphabet (the exact alphabet position varies). Among modern-style Cyrillic scripts (known as "civil script" or "Petrine script"), Є/є was first used in Serbian books (end of the 18th century and first half of the 19th century); sometimes, Serbian printers might be using Э/э instead of Є/є due to font availability. For the modern Ukrainian language, Є/є is used since 1837 (orthography of almanach "Русалка Днѣстровая"). In Cyrillic numerals, Є is always preferred to E to represent 5.
Ukrainian
In Ukrainian and Rusyn (as well as in old Serbian orthography), Є/є represents /je/, or the iotated vowel sound /e/ after a palatalized consonant.
Old Slavonic, Old East Slavic
In oldest Slavonic manuscripts, Є is just a graphical variant of Е and thus represents /e/ without palatalization. Later Є replaces Ѥ (i.e. denotes /ʲe/ after consonants and /je/ after vowels and in an initial position). Yet later, it also accepts both decorative role (as an initial letter of a word, even if there were no iotation) and an orthographical one, to make distinction between certain homonymical forms (mostly between plural and singular).
New Church Slavonic
Since the mid-17th century, the Church Slavonic orthography has the following main rules related to the usage of shapes Є and Е:
In the modern Church Slavonic alphabet, the 6th letter is typically shown as Єєе (one uppercase accompanied with two variants of lowercase).
The different shapes Є and Е exist only in lowercase; thus in all caps and small caps styles, the distinction between Є and Е disappears.
Old Believers print their books using an older variant of New Church Slavonic language. Its orthography combines the fully formal system described above with the older tradition to use Є phonetically (after vowels, to represent iotated /je/).
Similar characters
The United States Federal Geographic Data Committee uses Ꞓ, a character similar to capital Є, to represent the Cambrian Period in geologic history.
Є is similar to the symbol for the euro currency ⟨€⟩. In a memorandum from the European Commission on the design of the euro sign, Ukrainian Ye was accidentally used to represent the Greek letter Epsilon.