Ef or Fe (Ф ф; italics: ''Ф ф'') is a

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

letter, commonly representing the voiceless labiodental fricative , like the pronunciation of in ''fill'', ''flee'' or ''fall''. The Cyrillic letter Ef is romanized as .

History

The Cyrillic letter Ef was derived from the Greek letter Phi (Φ φ). It merged with and eliminated the letter

Fita Fita (Ѳ ѳ; italics: ''Ѳ ѳ'') is a letter of the Early Cyrillic alphabet. The shape and the name of the letter are derived from the Θ, Greek letter theta (Θ θ). In the ISO 9 system, Ѳ is romanized using F grave accent (F̀ ...

(Ѳ) in the

Russian alphabet The Russian alphabet (, or , more traditionally) is the script used to write the Russian language. The modern Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters: twenty consonants (, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ), ten vowels (, , , , , , , , , ) ...

in 1918. The name of Ef 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 ...

is ( or ), in later Church Slavonic and Russian form it became (). In the Cyrillic numeral system, Ef has a value of 500.

Appearance and usage in Slavic languages

The Slavic languages have almost no native words containing . This sound did not exist in

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...

(PIE). It arose in Greek and

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

from PIE (which yielded Slavic ). In some instances in Latin, it represented historical th-fronting and derived from Proto-Indo-European . In the

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoke ...

, the f sound arose from PIE via

Grimm's law Grimm's law, also known as the First Germanic Consonant Shift or First Germanic Sound Shift, is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the first millennium BC, first d ...

, which remained unchanged in Slavic. The letter ф is thus almost exclusively found in words of foreign origin, especially Greek (from ''φ'' and sometimes from ''θ''),

, French, German, Dutch, English, and

Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic langua ...

Example borrowings in Russian: * from Greek: , "catastrophe" (from ''φ''); , "Theodore" (from ''θ''; cf. Bulgarian ) * from Latin: , "federation"; , "effect" * from German: , "potato" (from ''Kartoffel''); , "pound" (from ''Pfund'') * from Dutch: , "flag" * from English: , "office" * from French: , "France" The few native Slavic words with this letter (in different languages) are examples of

onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetics, phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as Oin ...

(like Russian verbs , etc.) or reflect sporadic pronunciation shifts: * from ''пв'' : Serbian 'to hope' (cf. Church Slavonic 'to hope') * from ''хв'' : Macedonian '(he) understands' (cf. Church Slavonic 'to take, to catch'), Russian 'bustard' (cf. Ukrainian 'bustard') * from ''кв'' : Russian 'eagle-owl' (cf. Ukrainian 'to cry') * from ''х'' : Russian

toponym Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of ''wikt:toponym, toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage, and types. ''Toponym'' is the general term for ...

' Fili' (from 'sickly')

Slavic languages

Ef is the 21st letter of the

Bulgarian alphabet The Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet () is used to write the Bulgarian language. The Cyrillic alphabet was originally developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 9th – 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School. It has been used in Bul ...

; the 22nd letter of the

; the 23rd letter of the Belarusian alphabet; the 25th letter of the Serbian and Ukrainian alphabet; and the 26th letter of the Macedonian alphabet. It represents the consonant unless it is before a palatalizing vowel, when it represents .

Related letters and other similar characters

* : Greek letter Phi *Ѳ ѳ : Cyrillic letter Fita *F f : Latin letter F *Փ փ : Armenian letter Piwr *Q q Latin letter Q *Ჶ ჶ Fi (letter)

History

Appearance and usage in Slavic languages

Slavic languages

Related letters and other similar characters

Computing codes

Cultural references

References

External links