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 languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, ...

. 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 alphabet, Latin I and J, the Cyrillic І (І, і), Yi (Cy ...

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 C ...

, the Pannonian Rusyn alphabet, and the Prešov Rusyn alphabet of Slovakia, where it represents the

iotated In Slavic languages, iotation (, ) is a form of palatalization that occurs when a consonant comes into contact with a palatal approximant from the succeeding phoneme. The is represented by iota (ι) in the Cyrillic alphabet and the Greek alphab ...

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 Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...

, ''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, th ...

alphabet in the late 1700s and early 1800s, where it represented the sound ; in this capacity, it was introduced by

Dositej Obradović Dositej Obradović ( sr-Cyrl, Доситеј Обрадовић; 17 February 1739 – 7 April 1811) was a Serbian writer, biographer, diarist, philosopher, pedagogue, educational reformer, linguist, polyglot and the first minister of education ...

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 mos ...

, 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

* * * *{{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