Ukrainian Ye

Ukrainian Ye є; italics: Є є) is a character of the Cyrillic script. It is a separate letter in the Ukrainian alphabet (8th position since 1992, 7th position before then), the Pannonian Rusyn alphabet, and both the Carpathian Rusyn alphabets; in all of these, it comes directly after Е. In modern Church Slavonic, it is considered a variant form of Ye е) (there, the selection of Є and Е is driven by orthography rules). Until the mid-19th century, Є/є was also used in Romanian and Serbian (the letter was eliminated in Vuk Karadžić's alphabet and replaced by digraph је). Other modern Slavonic languages may use Є/є shapes instead of Е/е for decorative purposes. Then, the letter is usually referred to by the older name Yest and the descriptive name Long E.

Cyrillic letter
Ukrainian Ye
Phonetic usage:[je], [jɛ]
Numeric value:5
The Cyrillic script
Slavic letters
АБВГҐДЂ
ЃЕЀЁЄЖЗ
З́ЅИЍЙІЇ
ЈКЛЉМНЊ
ОŌПРСС́Т
ЋЌУӮЎФХ
ЦЧЏШЩЪЫ
ЬЭЮЯ
Non-Slavic letters
А́А̀ӐА̄А̊А̃Ӓ
Ӓ̄ӔӘӘ́Ә̃ӚВ̌
ҒГ̧Г̑Г̄Г̣Г̌Ҕ
ӺҒ̌ӶԀԂ
Д̆Д̣ԪԬД̆Ӗ
Е̄Е̃Ё̄Є̈ӁҖӜ
ԄҘӞЗ̌З̱З̣Ԑ
Ԑ̈ӠԆӢИ̃ҊӤ
И́ҚӃҠҞҜК̣
ԚӅԮԒԈӍӉ
ҢԨӇҤԊО́О̀
О̆О̂О̃ӦӦ̄ӨӨ̄
Ө́Ө̆ӪҨԤҦР̌
ҎԖҪС̣С̱Т̌Т̣
ҬԎУ̃Ӱ
Ӱ́ӲҮҮ́ҰХ̣Х̱
Х̮Х̑ҲӼӾҺҺ̈
ԦҴҶӴӋҸҼ
ҾЫ̆Ы̄ӸҌЭ̆Э̄
Э̇ӬӬ́Ӭ̄Ю̆Ю̈Ю̈́
Ю̄Я̆Я̄Я̈ԜӀ
Archaic letters
ҀѺ
ОУѠѼѾ
ѢѤѦ
ѪѨѬѮ
ѰѲԌ
ѴѶԘ
ԢԔԠԞ

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.

History

Letter Є/є was derived from one of variant forms of Cyrillic Ye 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" (Rusalka Dnestrovaya)). In Cyrillic numerals, Є is always preferred to E to represent 5.

Usage

Ukrainian and Rusyn

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

Khanty

In Khanty, the letter represents the sound /je/.

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 the mid-17th century, 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, participles, numerals and pronouns, use Є for plural/dual, if there exists a homonymous form in the 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 homonymy);
    • publishers from Kyiv 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 has often been ignored outside of the Russian Empire).

In the modern Church Slavonic alphabet, the 6th letter is typically shown as Єєе (one uppercase accompanied with two variants of lowercase).

The different shapes Є and Е exist only in lowercase; thus in all caps and small caps styles, the distinction between Є and Е disappears.

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 used to represent the Greek letter Epsilon.[2]

Computing codes

Character information
PreviewЄє
Unicode nameCYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER
UKRAINIAN IE
CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER
UKRAINIAN IE
Encodingsdecimalhexdecimalhex
Unicode1028U+04041108U+0454
UTF-8208 132D0 84209 148D1 94
Numeric character referenceЄЄєє
Named character referenceЄє
KOI8-U180B4164A4
Code page 8551358713486
Code page 866242F2243F3
Windows-1251170AA186BA
ISO-8859-5164A4244F4
Macintosh Cyrillic184B8185B9

References

  1. Federal Geographic Data Committee, ed. (August 2006). FGDC Digital Cartographic Standard for Geologic Map Symbolization FGDC-STD-013-2006 (PDF). U.S. Geological Survey for the Federal Geographic Data Committee. p. A–32–1. Retrieved August 23, 2010.
  2. "How to use the euro name and symbol". European Commission – Economic and Financial Affairs. Ec.europa.eu. Retrieved 2010-04-07.

Further reading

  • Півторак Г. П. Український алфавіт // Українська мова: Енциклопедія. — К.: Українська енциклопедія, 2000. ISBN 966-7492-07-9 — С. 679—680. (H. Pivtorak, "Ukrainian Alphabet")
  • The dictionary definition of Є at Wiktionary
  • The dictionary definition of є at Wiktionary
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