Ukrainian Ye


Ukrainian 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 and the descriptive name Long E.
In Ukrainian, Є/є commonly represents the sound or like the pronunciation of in "yes".
Ukrainian Ye is romanized as or. See scientific transliteration of Cyrillic.

History

Letter Є/є was derived from one of variant forms of Cyrillic Ye, known as "long E" or "anchor E". Є-shaped letter 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 is 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.

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 without palatalization. Later Є replaces Ѥ. Yet later, it also accepts both decorative role and an orthographical one, to make 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 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. In a memorandum from the European Commission on the design of the euro sign, Ukrainian Ye was accidentally used to represent the Greek letter Epsilon.

Related letters and other similar characters