Ye (Cyrillic)


E, known in Russian and Belarusian as Ye, Je, or Ie, is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In some languages this letter is called E. It commonly represents the vowel or, like the pronunciation of in "yes". It was derived from the Greek letter epsilon, and the shape is very similar to the Latin letter E or another version of E.
Ye is romanized using the Latin letter E for Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian, Ukrainian and Rusyn, and occasionally Russian, Je for Belarusian, Ye for Russian, and Ie occasionally for Russian and Belarusian.

Usage

Russian and Belarusian

  • At the beginning of a word or after a vowel, Ye represents the phonemic combination , like the pronunciation of in "yes". Ukrainian uses the letter in this way.
  • Following a consonant, Ye indicates that the consonant is palatalized, and represents the vowel , like the pronunciation of in "yes".
In Russian, the letter can follow unpalatalized consonants, especially,, and. In some loanwords, other consonants before are also not palatalized, see E. The letter also represents and after palatalized consonants,, and. In these cases, may be used, see Yo. In unstressed syllables, represents reduced vowels like, see Russian phonology and Vowel reduction in Russian.

Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian, Ukrainian and Rusyn

This letter is called E, and represents the vowel phoneme , like the pronunciation of in the word "set".

Mongolian

The letter represents the sound at the beginning of words like ес and ерөнхийлөгч, and also represents at the beginning of some words and in the middle or end of words and in Russian loanwords and transcriptions of foreign names. Finally, it represents in the volitional forms of certain verbs like хүргэе and тэгье, etc.

Turkic languages and Tajik

In Turkic languages utilizing the Cyrillic script and in Tajik, Ye is used to represent the phoneme ~, both word-finally and medially. Isolated, word-initially, or vowel-succeeding, this letter is substituted with the letter Э. If the letter Ye occurs word-initially, isolated, or vowel-succeeding, it represents the phoneme /je/~/jɛ/. This is done in imitation of the Russian usage, as many of these languages received Cyrillic orthographies as part of Russification in the Soviet Union.

Related letters and other similar characters