Ukrainian Ye


Ukrainian Ye or Round Ye is a character of the Cyrillic script. It is a separate letter in the Ukrainian alphabet, 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 . Until the mid-19th century, Є/є was also used in Romanian and Serbian. 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. If the two need to be distinguished, the descriptive name Broad E is sometimes used. It can also be found in the writing of the Khanty language.
In Ukrainian, Є/є commonly represents the sound or like the pronunciation of in "yes".
Ukrainian Ye is romanized as,, or even. See scientific transliteration of Cyrillic.
Ukrainian Ye also looks like a backwards version of Э judging by their appearance.

History

Letter Є/є was derived from one of the variant forms of Cyrillic Ye, known as "broad E" or "anchor E". Є-shaped letters can be found in late uncial and semi-uncial Cyrillic manuscripts, especially ones of Ukrainian origin. Typically it corresponds to the letter Iotated E 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. Among modern-style Cyrillic scripts, Є/є was first used in Serbian books ; sometimes, Serbian printers might be using Э/э instead of Є/є due to font availability. For the modern Ukrainian language, Є/є has been used since 1837. In Cyrillic numerals, Є is always preferred to E to represent 5.

Usage

Ukrainian and Rusyn

In Ukrainian and Rusyn, Є/є represents the sound combination or the vowel sound after a palatalized consonant.
It is the 8th letter of Ukrainian alphabet.

Khanty

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

Old Serbian

In old Serbian orthography, Є/є represented same sounds as in Ukrainian and Rusyn: the sound combination or the vowel sound after a palatalized consonant.
The letter was eliminated in Vuk Karadžić's alphabet and replaced by digraph је.

Old Slavonic, Old East Slavic

In the oldest Slavonic manuscripts, Є was just a graphical variant of Е and thus represents without palatalization. Later Є replaced Ѥ. Later on, it also accepted both a decorative role and an orthographical role, to make the distinction between certain homonymical forms.

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 ;
  • * publishers from Kyiv also use Є in the genitive case of three pronouns, and Е in the accusative case ;
  • as a numerical sign use Є, not Е.
In the modern Church Slavonic alphabet, the 6th letter is typically shown as Єєе.
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.

Similar characters

The United States Federal Geographic Data Committee uses Ꞓ, a character similar to capital Є, to represent the Cambrian Period in geologic history.
Є is similar to the symbol for the euro currency.

Related letters and other similar characters