Ef orFe (Ф ф; italics:Ф ф orФ ф; italics:Ф ф) is aCyrillic letter, commonly representing thevoiceless labiodental fricative/f/, like the pronunciation of⟨f⟩ infill,flee orfall. The Cyrillic letter Ef is romanized as⟨f⟩.
The Slavic languages have almost no native words containing/f/. This sound did not exist inProto-Indo-European (PIE). It arose inGreek andLatin from PIE*bʰ (which yielded Slavic/b/). In some instances in Latin, it represented historicalth-fronting and derived from Proto-Indo-European*dʰ. In theGermanic languages, the f sound arose from PIE*p viaGrimm's law, which remained unchanged in Slavic. The letter ф is thus almost exclusively found in words of foreign origin, especially Greek (fromφ and sometimes fromθ),Latin,French,German,Dutch,English, andTurkic languages
Example borrowings in Russian:
from Greek:катастрофа, "catastrophe" (fromφ);Фёдор, "Theodore" (fromθ; cf. BulgarianТодор)
from Latin:федерация, "federation";эффект, "effect"
from German:картофель, "potato" (fromKartoffel);фунт, "pound" (fromPfund)
from Dutch:флаг, "flag"
from English:офис, "office"
from French:Франция, "France"
The few native Slavic words with this letter (in different languages) are examples ofonomatopoeia (like Russian verbsфукать,фыркать etc.) or reflect sporadic pronunciation shifts:
