Be (Б б; italics: ''Б б'') is a letter of the

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...

. It commonly represents the voiced bilabial plosive , like the English pronunciation of in "ball". It should not be confused with the Cyrillic letter Ve (В в), which is shaped like Latin capital letter B but represents the voiced labiodental fricative or the

voiced bilabial fricative The voiced bilabial fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is B. The official symbol is the ...

. The Cyrillic letter Б (Be) is romanized using the Latin letter B.

History

The Cyrillic letters Be and Ve (В в) were both derived from the Greek letter

Beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; or ) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represe ...

(Β β). In the

Early Cyrillic alphabet The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is an alphabetic writing system that was developed in Medieval Bulgaria in the Preslav Literary School during the late 9th century. It is used to write the Chur ...

the name of the letter Be was (''buky''/буки), meaning "letter". In the Cyrillic numeral system, the letter Be had no numeric value because the letter Ve inherited the Greek letter Beta's numeric value.

Form

The Russian small letter б (be) is similar (but not identical) in shape to the digit 6. Its lowercase form also somewhat resembles a lowercase letter B ("b"), the letter to which it corresponds in the Latin alphabet. After all, the lowercase letter B ("b") developed from scribal alterations to the capital letter B ("B"), just as б did from scribal alterations to the capital letter В ("Ve"). In Serbian and Macedonian the italic form is allowed to vary, but the regular should look like in other languages. The cursive form of the lowercase letter Be resembles the lowercase Greek letter Delta (δ), but they are slightly different in their upper portions.

Usage

In Russian and Bulgarian, the letter Be generally represents the voiced bilabial plosive , but word-finally or before a voiceless

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

, it also represents the voiceless . Before a palatalizing vowel, it represents . In Macedonian, the letter represents the sound , but if it is in the final position of the word, it is pronounced as , like in ('bread'). In Mari, it may represent either /b/ or the

. In Serbian, the letter represents the voiced bilabial plosive /b/, regardless of the position in the word.

History

Form

Usage

Related letters and other similar characters

Computing codes

References

External links