| Ukrainian Ye, єдяджє (Early Cyrillic alphabet) | |
|---|---|
| Є є | |
 | |
| Usage | |
| Writing system | Cyrillic |
| Type | Alphabetic |
| Sound values | [je], [jɛ] |
| History | |
| Development | |
| Other | |
| Associated numbers | 5 (Cyrillic numerals) |
| This article containsphonetic transcriptions in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. For the distinction between[ ],/ / and ⟨ ⟩, seeIPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. | |
Ukrainian Ye orRound Ye (Є є; italics:Є є) is a character of theCyrillic script. It is a separate letter in theUkrainian alphabet, thePannonian Rusyn alphabet, and both theCarpathian Rusyn alphabets; in all of these, it comes directly afterЕ. In modernChurch Slavonic, it is considered a variant form ofYe (Е е) (there, the selection of Є and Е is driven by orthography rules). Until the mid-19th century, Є/є was also used inRomanian andSerbian. 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 nameYest (which also refers to the conventionalYe). If the two need to be distinguished, the descriptive nameBroad E is sometimes used (in contrast with "Narrow E"). It can also be found in the writing of theKhanty language.
In Ukrainian, Є/є commonly represents the sound/je/ or/jɛ/ like the pronunciation of⟨ye⟩ in "yes". (Seeusage for more detail.)
Ukrainian Ye is romanized as⟨je⟩,⟨ê⟩, or even⟨e⟩. Seescientific transliteration of Cyrillic.
Ukrainian Ye also looks like a backwards version ofЭ judging by their appearance. (Є/Э)
Letter Є/є was derived from one of the variant forms of CyrillicYe (Е е), known as "broad E" or "anchor E". Є-shaped letters can be found in late uncial (ustav) and semi-uncial (poluustav) Cyrillic manuscripts, especially ones of Ukrainian origin. Typically it corresponds to the letterIotated 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 has been used since 1837 (orthography of almanach "Русалка Днѣстровая" (Rusalka Dnistrovaya)). InCyrillic numerals, Є is always preferred to E to represent 5.
InUkrainian andRusyn, Є/є represents the sound combination/je/ or the vowel sound/e/ after a palatalized consonant.
It is the 8th letter ofUkrainian alphabet (in 1935-1992 it was the 7th, asҐ was banned).
InKhanty, the letter represents the sound /je/.
InoldSerbian orthography, Є/є represented same sounds as in Ukrainian and Rusyn: the sound combination/je/ or the vowel sound/e/ after a palatalized consonant.
The letter was eliminated inVuk Karadžić'salphabet and replaced bydigraph је.
In the oldest Slavonic manuscripts, Є was just a graphical variant of Е and thus represents/e/ without palatalization. Later Є replacedѤ (i.e. denotes/ʲe/ after consonants and/je/ after vowels and in an initial position). Later on, it also accepted both a decorative role (as an initial letter of a word, even if there was no iotation) and an orthographical role, to make the distinction between certainhomonymical forms (mostly betweenplural andsingular).
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 asЄєе (one uppercase accompanied with two variants of lowercase).
The different shapes Є and Е exist only in lowercase; thus inall caps andsmall 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/).
The United StatesFederal Geographic Data Committee usesꞒ, a character similar to capital Є, to represent theCambrian Period in geologic history.[1]
Є is similar to thesymbol for the euro currency⟨€⟩.
| Preview | Є | є | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER UKRAINIAN IE | CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER UKRAINIAN IE | ||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex |
| Unicode | 1028 | U+0404 | 1108 | U+0454 |
| UTF-8 | 208 132 | D0 84 | 209 148 | D1 94 |
| Numeric character reference | Є | Є | є | є |
| Named character reference | Є | є | ||
| KOI8-U | 180 | B4 | 164 | A4 |
| Code page 855 | 135 | 87 | 134 | 86 |
| Code page 866 | 242 | F2 | 243 | F3 |
| Windows-1251 | 170 | AA | 186 | BA |
| ISO-8859-5 | 164 | A4 | 244 | F4 |
| Macintosh Cyrillic | 184 | B8 | 185 | B9 |
