Yi (Ї ї; italics:
''Ї ї'') is a letter of the
Cyrillic script
The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic 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 co ...
. Yi is derived from the Greek letter
iota
Iota (; uppercase: Ι, lowercase: ι; ) is the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Yodh. Letters that arose from this letter include the Latin I and J, the Cyrillic І (І, і), Yi (Ї, ї), and ...
with
diaeresis.
It was the initial variant of the Cyrillic letter
Іі, which saw change from two dots to one in 18th century, possibly inspired by similar Latin letter i. Later two variants of the letter separated to become distinct letters in the Ukrainian alphabet.
It is used in the
Ukrainian alphabet
The Ukrainian alphabet ( uk, абе́тка, áзбука алфа́ві́т, abetka, azbuka alfavit) is the set of letters used to write Ukrainian, which is the official language of Ukraine. It is one of several national variations of the ...
, the
Pannonian Rusyn alphabet, and the
Prešov Rusyn alphabet of Slovakia, where it represents the
iotated vowel sound , like the pronunciation of in "yeast". As the historical variant of the Cyrillic Іі it represented either /i/ (as i in ''pizza'') or /j/ (as y in ''yen'').
In various
romanization systems of
Ukrainian, ''ї'' is represented by Latin letters ''i'' or ''yi'' (word-initially), ''yi'', ''ji'', or even ''
ï''.
It was formerly also used in the
Serbian Cyrillic
The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet ( sr, / , ) is a variation of the Cyrillic script used to write the Serbian language, updated in 1818 by Serbian linguist Vuk Karadžić. It is one of the two alphabets used to write standard modern Serbian, t ...
alphabet in the late 1700s and early 1800s, where it represented the sound ; in this capacity, it was introduced by
Dositej Obradović but eventually replaced with the modern letter
ј by
Vuk Stefanović Karadžić.
[Maretić, Tomislav. ''Gramatika i stilistika hrvatskoga ili srpskoga književnog jezika''. 1899.][Karadžić, Vuk Stefanović. ''Pismenica serbskoga iezika, po govoru prostoga narod’a'', 1814.]
In Ukrainian, the letter was introduced as part of the ''Zhelekhivka''
orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...
, in Yevhen Zhelekhivsky's Ukrainian–German dictionary (2 volumes, 1885–86).
Related letters and other similar characters
*Ӥ ӥ :
Cyrillic letter I with diaeresis
*Ï ï :
Latin letter I with diaeresis
*Ι ι :
Greek letter Ι
*Ј ј :
Cyrillic letter J
*Ι ι :
Greek letter Iota
Computing codes
References
External links
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*
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*{{cite encyclopedia , url=http://omniglot.com/writing/ukrainian.htm , title=Ukrainian (Українська) , encyclopedia=Omniglot: the online encyclopedia of writing systems & languages , author=Ager, Simon , access-date=11 Apr 2012
Cyrillic letters
Ukrainian language