Ukrainian Ye

Cyrillic letter Ukrainian Ye

Cyrillic numerals: 5
Unicode (hex)
majuscule: U+0404
minuscule: U+0454
Cyrillic script Slavic letters
А	Б	В	Г	Ґ	Д	Ђ
Ѓ	Е	Ѐ	Ё	Є	Ж	З
Ѕ	И	Ѝ	І	Ї	Й	Ј
К	Л	Љ	М	Н	Њ	О
П	Р	С	Т	Ћ	Ќ	У
Ў	Ф	Х	Ц	Ч	Џ	Ш
Щ	Ъ	Ы	Ь	Э	Ю	Я
Non-Slavic letters
Ӑ	Ӓ	Ә	Ӛ	Ӕ	Ғ	Ҕ
Ӻ	Ӷ	Ԁ	Ԃ	Ꚉ	Ӗ	Ӂ
Җ	Ӝ	Ԅ	Ҙ	Ӟ	Ԑ	Ӡ
Ԇ	Ӣ	Ҋ	Ӥ	Қ	Ӄ	Ҡ
Ҟ	Ҝ	Ԟ	Ԛ	Ӆ	Ԓ	Ԡ
Ԉ	Ԕ	Ӎ	Ӊ	Ң	Ӈ	Ҥ
Ԣ	Ԋ	Ӧ	Ө	Ӫ	Ҩ	Ԥ
Ҧ	Ҏ	Ԗ	Ҫ	Ԍ	Ҭ	Ԏ
Ӯ	Ӱ	Ӳ	Ү	Ұ	Ҳ	Ӽ
Ӿ	Һ	Ԧ	Ҵ	Ҷ	Ӵ	Ӌ
Ҹ	Ꚇ	Ҽ	Ҿ	Ӹ	Ҍ	Ӭ
Ԙ	Ԝ	Ӏ
Archaic letters
Ҁ	Ѻ	Ѹ	Ѡ	Ѿ	Ѣ	Ꙓ
Ꙗ	Ѥ	Ѧ	Ѫ	Ѩ	Ѭ	Ѯ
Ѱ	Ѳ	Ѵ	Ѷ	Ꙟ
List of Cyrillic letters
Cyrillic digraphs

Ukrainian Ye (Є є; italics: Є є) is a character of the Cyrillic script. It is considered as an individual letter of modern Ukrainian alphabet (the 8th in row since 1992, and the 7th before this date) and as a variant form of Ye (Е е) in modern Church Slavonic language (where the selection of Є and Е is driven by orthography rules, see below). Until mid-19th century, Є/є has also been used in Serbian language (in Vuk Karadžić's alphabet, the letter was eliminated and replaced by digraph је). Other modern Slavonic languages may use Є/є shapes instead of Е/е for decorative purposes.

In Ukrainian, Є/є commonly represents the sound /je/ or /jɛ/, like the pronunciation of ⟨ye⟩ in "yes". (See Usage for more detail.)

Ukrainian Ye is romanized as ⟨je⟩ or ⟨e⟩. See Scientific transliteration of Cyrillic.

1 History
2 Usage
3 Related letters and other similar characters
4 Computing codes
5 References
6 Further reading
7 External links

History

Letter Є/є was derived from one of variant forms of Cyrillic Ye (Е е), known as "long E" or "anchor E". Є-shaped letter can be found in late uncial (ustav) and semi-uncial (poluustav) Cyrillic manuscripts, especially ones of Ukrainian origin. Typically it corresponds to the letter Iotated 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 is used since 1837 (orthography of almanach "Русалка Днѣстровая").

Usage

Ukrainian, Rusyn

In Ukrainian and Rusyn (as well as in old Serbian orthography), Є/є represents /je/, or the iotated vowel sound /e/ after a palatalized consonant.

Old Slavonic, Old East Slavic

In oldest Slavonic manuscripts, Є is just a graphical variant of Е and thus represents /e/ without palatalization. Later Є replaces Ѥ (i.e. denotes /ʲe/ after consonants and /je/ after vowels and in an initial position). Yet later, it also accepts both decorative role (as an initial letter of a word, even if there were no iotation) and an orthographical one, to make distinction between certain homonymical forms (mostly between plural and singular).

New Church Slavonic

Since mid-17th c., the Church Slavonic orthography has the following main rules related to the usage of shapes Є and Е:

in an initial position, always use Є;
otherwise, use Е with the following exceptions:
- in noun's endings, use -євъ and -ємъ for plural and -евъ, -емъ for singular;
- in other endings, suffixes and roots of nouns, adjectives, particilpes, numerals and pronouns, use Є for plural/dual, if there exists an homonymical form in singular (either of the same word or a different one; the actual rule is much more complicated and not well-defined, as there are multiple other ways to eliminate such a homonymy);
- publishers from Kiev also use Є in the genitive case of three pronouns (менє, тебє, себє), and Е in the accusative case (мене, тебе, себе);
as a numerical sign (with value 5) use Є, not Е (the rule often been ignored outside of the Russian Empire).

In the modern Church Slavonic alphabet, the 5th letter is typically shown as Єєе (one uppercase accompanied with two variants of lowercase).

Notice 1. Different shapes Є and Е exist only in lowerace, thus in all caps and small caps styles, the distinction between Є and Е disappears.

Notice 2. 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/).

Similar characters

The United States Federal Geographic Data Committee uses a character similar to capital Є to represent the Cambrian Period in geologic history.^[1]

Є is similar to the symbol for the euro currency ⟨€⟩. In a memorandum from the European Commission on the design of the euro sign, Ukrainian Ye was accidentally used to represent the Greek letter Epsilon.^[2]

Related letters and other similar characters

Computing codes

character	Є		є
Unicode name	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER UKRAINIAN IE		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER UKRAINIAN IE
character encoding	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	1028	0404	1108	0454
UTF-8	208 132	D0 84	209 148	D1 94
Numeric character reference	Є	Є	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

References

^ Federal Geographic Data Committee, ed (August 2006) (PDF). FGDC Digital Cartographic Standard for Geologic Map Symbolization FGDC-STD-013-2006. U.S. Geological Survey for the Federal Geographic Data Committee. p. A–32–1. http://ngmdb.usgs.gov/fgdc_gds/geolsymstd/fgdc-geolsym-all.pdf. Retrieved August 23, 2010.
^ "How to use the euro name and symbol". European Commission – Economic and Financial Affairs. Ec.europa.eu. http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/euro/cash/symbol/index_en.htm. Retrieved 2010-04-07.

External links

The Wiktionary entry for Є
The Wiktionary entry for є