I (Cyrillic)

Cyrillic letter I
Numeric value:	8
The Cyrillic script
Slavic letters
А Б В Г Ґ Д Ђ Ѓ Е Ѐ Ё Є Ж З З́ Ѕ И Ѝ І Ї Й Ј К Л Љ М Н Њ О П Р С С́ Т Ћ Ќ У Ў Ф Х Ц Ч Џ Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я
Non-Slavic letters
Ӑ А̄ А̊ А̃ Ӓ Ӓ̄ Ә Ә́ Ә̃ Ӛ Ӕ Ғ Г̧ Г̑ Г̄ Ҕ Ӻ Ӷ Ԁ Ԃ Ꚃ Ꚁ Ꚉ Ԫ Ԭ Ӗ Е̄ Е̃ Ё̄ Є̈ Ӂ Җ Ꚅ Ӝ Ԅ Ҙ Ӟ Ԑ Ԑ̈ Ӡ Ԇ Ӣ И̃ Ҋ Ӥ Қ Ӄ Ҡ Ҟ Ҝ Ԟ Ԛ Ӆ Ԯ Ԓ Ԡ Ԉ Ԕ Ӎ Ӊ Ң Ԩ Ӈ Ҥ Ԣ Ԋ О̆ О̃ О̄ Ӧ Ө Ө̄ Ӫ Ҩ Ԥ Ҧ Р̌ Ҏ Ԗ Ҫ Ԍ Ꚑ Ҭ Ꚋ Ꚍ Ԏ У̃ Ӯ Ӱ Ӱ́ Ӳ Ү Ү́ Ұ Х̑ Ҳ Ӽ Ӿ Һ Ԧ Ꚕ Ҵ Ꚏ Ҷ Ӵ Ӌ Ҹ Ꚓ Ꚗ Ꚇ Ҽ Ҿ Ы̆ Ы̄ Ӹ Ҍ Э̆ Э̄ Э̇ Ӭ Ӭ́ Ӭ̄ Ю̆ Ю̈ Ю̈́ Ю̄ Я̆ Я̄ Я̈ Ԙ Ԝ Ӏ
Archaic letters
Ꙁ Ꙃ Ꙅ Ꙇ Ꙉ Ҁ Ѻ ОУ Ꙋ Ѡ Ѽ Ꙍ Ѿ Ꙏ Ѣ Ꙑ Ꙓ Ꙕ Ꙗ Ѥ Ѧ Ꙙ Ѫ Ꙛ Ѩ Ꙝ Ѭ Ѯ Ѱ Ѳ Ѵ Ѷ Ꙟ Ꙡ Ꙣ Ꙥ Ꙧ Ꙩ Ꙫ Ꙭ ꙮ Ꚙ Ꚛ
List of Cyrillic letters Cyrillic digraphs

I (И и; italics: И и) is a letter used in almost all ancient and modern Cyrillic alphabets.

It commonly represents the close front unrounded vowel /i/, like the pronunciation of ⟨i⟩ in "machine", or the near-close near-front unrounded vowel /ɪ/, like the pronunciation of ⟨i⟩ in "bin".

History

The Cyrillic letter I was derived from the Greek letter Eta (Η η). This is why the earliest (up to the 13th century) shape of Cyrillic ⟨И⟩ was ⟨H⟩.

The name of the Cyrillic letter I in the Early Cyrillic alphabet was ижє (iže), meaning "which".

In the Cyrillic numeral system, the Cyrillic letter I had a value of 8.

In the Early Cyrillic alphabet there was little or no distinction between the letter ⟨И⟩ and the letter ⟨І⟩ which was derived from the Greek letter Iota (Ι ι). They both remained in the alphabetical repertoire because they represented different numbers in the Cyrillic numeral system, eight and ten, and are therefore sometimes referred to as octal I and decimal I. Today they co-exist in Church Slavonic (with no pronunciation difference) and in Ukrainian (representing actual pronunciation differences). Other modern orthographies for Slavic languages eliminated one of the two letters during alphabet reforms of the 19th or 20th centuries: Russian, Macedonian, Serbian and Bulgarian languages use only ⟨И⟩, whereas Belarusian uses only ⟨І⟩.

Form

Originally, Cyrillic ⟨И⟩ had the shape identical to the capital Greek letter Eta ⟨Η⟩. Later, the middle stroke was turned counterclockwise resulting in the modern form looking like a mirrored capital Latin letter N ⟨N⟩ (this is why ⟨И⟩ is used in faux Cyrillic typography). But the style of the two letters is not fully identical: in roman fonts, ⟨И⟩ has heavier vertical strokes and serifs on all four corners, whereas ⟨N⟩ has a heavier diagonal stroke and lacks a serif on the bottom-right corner.

In roman and oblique fonts, the lowercase letter ⟨и⟩ has the same shape as the uppercase letter ⟨И⟩. In italic fonts, the lowercase letter ⟨и⟩ looks like the italic form of the lowercase Latin U ⟨u⟩. Both capital and small hand-written forms of the Cyrillic letter I look like hand-written forms of the Latin letter U.

Usage

Since the 1930s, ⟨и⟩ has been the tenth letter of the Russian alphabet, and in Russian it represents /i/, like the i in machine, except after some consonants (see below). In Russian ⟨и⟩ typically denotes a preceding soft consonant and therefore is considered the soft counterpart to ⟨ы⟩ (which represents [ɨ]) but, unlike other "soft" vowels (⟨е⟩, ⟨ё⟩, ⟨ю⟩, and ⟨я⟩), ⟨и⟩ in isolation is not preceded by the /j/ semivowel. ⟨И⟩ pronounced as [ɨ] in ⟨жи⟩ (sounds like ⟨жы⟩ [ʐɨ]), ⟨ши⟩ (sounds like ⟨шы⟩ [ʂɨ]) and ⟨ци⟩ (sounds like ⟨цы⟩ [t͡sɨ]), because in Russian the sound [i] after consonants “zh” ⟨ж⟩, “sh” ⟨ш⟩ and “ts” ⟨ц⟩ is inarticulable.

In Ukrainian and Belarusian, the sound /i/ is represented by another letter ⟨і⟩, sometimes called Ukrainian I, removed from the modern Russian alphabet. Ukrainian and Belarusian ⟨і⟩ sounds like Russian ⟨и⟩ [i], but a clearly distinct sound [ɪ] is represented by ⟨и⟩ in Ukrainian, which only slightly differs from Russian ⟨ы⟩ and perceived as ⟨ы⟩ by a Russian speaker.

The letter ⟨и⟩ is the eleventh letter of the Ukrainian alphabet.

In the Cyrillic Serbian alphabet ⟨и⟩ is the tenth letter of the alphabet and in Serbian it represents /i/, like the i in machine or i in bill. In the Latin Serbian alphabet the same vowel is represented by "I/i".

In Macedonian it is the eleventh letter of the alphabet and it represents the sound /i/.

It is transliterated from Russian as ⟨i⟩, or from Ukrainian as ⟨y⟩ or ⟨i⟩, depending on romanization systems. See romanization of Russian and romanization of Ukrainian.

Accented forms and derived letters

The vowel represented by ⟨и⟩, as well as almost any other Slavonic vowel, can be stressed or unstressed. Stressed variants are sometimes (in special texts, like dictionaries, or to prevent ambiguity) graphically marked by acute, grave, double grave, or circumflex accent marks.

Special Serbian texts also use ⟨и⟩ with a macron to represent long unstressed variant of the sound. Serbian ⟨и⟩ with a circumflex can be unstressed as well; in this case, it represent the genitive case of plural forms and is used to distinguish them from other similar forms.

Modern Church Slavonic orthography uses smooth breathing sign (Greek and Church Slavonic: psili, Latin: spiritus lenis) above the initial vowels (just for tradition, there is no difference in pronunciation). It can be combined with acute or grave accents, if necessary.

None of these above-mentioned combinations is considered as a separate letter of respective alphabet, but one of them (⟨Ѝ⟩) has an individual code position in Unicode.

⟨И⟩ with a breve forms the letter ⟨й⟩ for the consonant /j/ or a similar semi-vowel, like the y in English "yes" or "boy." This form has been used regularly in Church Slavonic since the 16th century, but it officially became a separate letter of alphabet much later (In Russian, only in 1918). The original name of ⟨й⟩ was I s kratkoy ('I with the short [line]'), later I kratkoye ('short I') in Russian, similarly I kratko in Bulgarian, but Yot in Ukrainian. For the details, see the article Short I.

Cyrillic alphabets of non-Slavic languages have additional ⟨и⟩-based letters, like ⟨Ӥ⟩ or ⟨Ӣ⟩.

Related letters and other similar characters

• Η η : Greek letter Eta
• Ι ι : Greek letter Iota
• I i : Latin letter I
• Й й : Cyrillic letter Short I

Computing codes

Character	И		и
Unicode name	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER I		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER I
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	1048	U+0418	1080	U+0438
UTF-8	208 152	D0 98	208 184	D0 B8
Numeric character reference	И	И	и	и
KOI8-R and KOI8-U	233	E9	201	C9
Code page 855	184	B8	183	B7
Code page 866	136	88	168	A8
Windows-1251	200	C8	232	E8
ISO-8859-5	184	B8	216	D8
Macintosh Cyrillic	136	88	232	E8

External links

• The dictionary definition of И at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of и at Wiktionary