In the Ukrainian Ye world, we find endless aspects that lead us to reflect, question and even marvel. Ukrainian Ye is a topic that has aroused the interest of many people throughout history, its roots go back to ancient times and its influence is still present in contemporary society. In this article, we will explore the different facets of Ukrainian Ye, from its impact on culture to its implications in everyday life. Through a detailed and enriching analysis, we will seek to understand in depth everything that Ukrainian Ye has to offer us, unraveling mysteries, revealing truths and providing a comprehensive vision of this phenomenon.
Ukrainian Ye or Round Ye (Є 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 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 (which also refers to the conventional Ye). If the two need to be distinguished, the descriptive name Broad E is sometimes used (in contrast with "Narrow E"). It can also be found in the writing of the Khanty language.
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⟩, ⟨ê⟩, or even ⟨e⟩. See scientific transliteration of Cyrillic.
Ukrainian Ye also looks like a backwards version of Э judging by their appearance. (Є/Э)
Letter Є/є was derived from one of the variant forms of Cyrillic Ye (Е е), known as "broad E" or "anchor E". Є-shaped letters 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 has been used since 1837 (orthography of almanach "Русалка Днѣстровая" (Rusalka Dnistrovaya)). In Cyrillic numerals, Є is always preferred to E to represent 5.
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.
In Khanty, the letter represents the sound /je/.
In the oldest Slavonic manuscripts, Є was just a graphical variant of Е and thus represents /e/ without palatalization. Later Є replaced Ѥ (i.e. denotes /ʲe/ after consonants and /je/ after vowels and in an initial position). Later on, it also accepted both a decorative role (as an initial letter of a word, even if there was no iotation) and an orthographical role, to make the distinction between certain homonymical forms (mostly between plural and singular).
Since the mid-17th century, the Church Slavonic orthography has the following main rules related to the usage of shapes Є and Е:
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/).
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 ⟨€⟩.
Preview | Є | є | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER UKRAINIAN IE |
CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER UKRAINIAN IE | ||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 1028 | U+0404 | 1108 | U+0454 |
UTF-8 | 208 132 | D0 84 | 209 148 | D1 94 |
Numeric character reference | Є |
Є |
є |
є |
Named character reference | 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 |