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Э э (Э э; italics: ''Э э''; also known as backwards ye, from
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries * Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and p ...
, ''ye oborótnoye'', ) is a letter found in three Slavic languages:
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries * Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and p ...
,
Belarusian Belarusian may refer to: * Something of, or related to Belarus * Belarusians, people from Belarus, or of Belarusian descent * A citizen of Belarus, see Demographics of Belarus * Belarusian language * Belarusian culture * Belarusian cuisine * Byelor ...
, and
West Polesian The West Polesian language (захыднёполіськая мова) is the East Slavic language spoken in southwestern Belarus, in northwestern Ukraine and adjoining regions of Poland. There is controversy regarding whether West Polesian ...
. It represents the vowels and , as the e in the word "editor". In other Slavic languages that use the Cyrillic script, the sounds are represented by Ye (Е е), which represents in Russian and Belarusian in initial and postvocalic position or and palatalizes the preceding consonant. This letter closely resembles and should not be confused with the older Cyrillic letter Ukrainian Ye (Є є), of which Э is a reversed version. In Cyrillic Moldovan, which was used in the Moldovan SSR during the Soviet Union and is still used in Transnistria, the letter corresponds to ă in the Latin Romanian alphabet, and the phoneme It is also used in the Cyrillic alphabets used by Mongolian and many
Uralic The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian lan ...
, Caucasian and Turkic languages of the former Soviet Union.


Origin

The letter originated in the thirteenth century as a variant of , at first, according to Đorđić in superscripted line-final position, but by the end of the century elsewhere as well. In the following centuries it continued to appear sporadically as an uncommon variant of , but not later than in the fifteenth century amongst the Eastern Slavs it began to be used to indicate initial (un
iotated In Slavic languages, iotation (, ) is a form of palatalization that occurs when a consonant comes into contact with a palatal approximant from the succeeding phoneme. The is represented by iota (ι) in the Cyrillic alphabet and the Greek alphabe ...
) . According to
Yefim Karskiy Yefim Fyodorovich Karsky ( be, Яўхім Фёдаравіч Карскі, Jaŭchim Fiodaravič Karski, russian: Ефим Фёдорович Карский; russian: Евфимий Феодорович Карский, older name form) (1 January 1 ...
, "Western Russian ustav knows , e.g. in Miscellany of the 15th c. from the Public Library (manuscr. #391) ( etc.), chronicles of 15th-16th cc., Miscellany of Poznań (16th c.), Statut of 1588... It is difficult to say whether it has been developed here independently or it came from South Slavic manuscripts, where occurs as early as in 13-14th cc." Although the revision of
Meletius Smotrytsky Meletius Smotrytsky ( uk, Мелетій Смотрицький, translit=Meletii Smotrytskyi; be, Мялецій Сматрыцкі, translit=Mialiecij Smatrycki; russian: Мелетий Смотрицкий, translit=Meletiy Smotritsky; pl, M ...
’s grammar published in Moscow in 1648 does not include in its alphabet, it does consistently write (''Etymologia''), in contrast to in the first edition of 1619. It was by no means confined to this function in the period, however, as the prevalent spellings (beside ) for modern Russian , demonstrate.


In modern Russian

In the specimens of the civil script presented to Peter I in 1708, forms of were included among forms of , but the latter was deleted by Peter. The former was used in some early 18th-century Russian texts, but some authorities of the period considered it superfluous, like Mikhail Lomonosov, on the grounds that "the letter Е, having several different pronunciations, could serve in the pronoun and the interjection " and that it was inappropriate to introduce letters solely for use in loanwords. However, the inclusion of in its modern function, in the Russian Academy's Dictionary of 1789–94, marks the point from which it can be considered as an established part of the Russian orthographical standard. There were still some objections to the letter even as late as 1817, whe
M. T. Kačenovskij
was questioning whether "yet another hard э" was necessary when the language already had "a soft ѣ and a hard е". In contemporary Russian, is used to represent , in initial position ( 'electricity') and postvocalic position ( 'duel'). Among such words are only a few native Russian roots: (это 'this is', этот/эта/это 'this (m./f./n.)', эти 'these', поэтому 'thus' etc.), (экий 'what a'), / (эдак/этак 'that way', эдакий/этакий 'sort of') and a few interjections like 'hey', 'uh, oh', 'uh'. Even though Russian contains a significant number of loanwords in which occurs after a hard (unpalatalised) consonant, it is still the practice to use the letter for , : ( tennis,
sepsis Sepsis, formerly known as septicemia (septicaemia in British English) or blood poisoning, is a life-threatening condition that arises when the body's response to infection causes injury to its own tissues and organs. This initial stage is follo ...
). There are few traditional exceptions to that practice among
common noun A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa'', ''Jupiter'', ''Sarah'', ''Microsoft)'' as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''continent, ...
loanwords: * the original list (the first half of the 20th century) contained just three words: ** 'mayor', from French ** 'peer (a noble)', from French ** 'sir', from English or from Old French * two later additions (1950s-1960s): ** 'master, skilled artist', from French ** , from French * new additions (1980s and later) are more numerous: ** 'racket, racketeering', from English ** 'rap (music)', from English ** 'fantasy (literature)', from English ** and several others; spelling of new words sometimes varies and dictionaries often give variants or contradict one another (like 'hatchback (car)' in spelling dictionary vs / in explanatory dictiona

. In
proper noun A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa'', ''Jupiter'', ''Sarah'', ''Microsoft)'' as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''continent, ...
s, however, may occur after consonants: ' Ulan-Ude' and 'Blair'. However, many such loanwords are spelled with : 'Blériot' (a French aviator). That is the case especially for names that entered the language centuries ago like: , 'Berlin'. The use of is much more frequent for names from non- European languages: 'Mao Zedong'. The letter is also used in Russian to render initial œ in foreign words: thus (the river in France) is written . After consonants this is transcribed as . In the 19th century, some writers used for that sound in both positions, but that was never accepted as standard orthography. (The letter was re-invented in the 20th century for
Kildin Sami Kildin may refer to: * Kildin Island * Kildin class destroyer * Kildin Sami * Ostrov (air base) Ostrov (Russian: ''Веретье'' ("Veret"); also Ostrov-5, Gorokhovka) is a Russian Air Force air base
.) It is also used to represent a stressed in languages such as English, which can cause a problem of conflating with English (for example, "Addison" and "Edison" would be spelled the same). However, in other positions, Russian also uses for and for .


In modern Belarusian

Unlike Russian, Belarusian has many native words in which it occurs after a hard consonant. Moreover, its orthography was standardized later than that of Russian (which reached its present form at the beginning of the 20th century), on the basis of the spoken language rather than historical tradition. Consequently, and are written in accordance with pronunciation: for initial and after hard consonants, for initial and postvocalic and after soft consonants. That also means that is much more frequent in Belarusian than in Russian.


In other languages

In Tuvan the Cyrillic letter can be written as a double vowel. In the
Tajik language Tajik (Tajik: , , ), also called Tajiki Persian (Tajik: , , ) or Tajiki, is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by Tajiks. It is closely related to neighbouring Dari with which it forms a continuum of mutually intelligibl ...
, the letters е and э have the same function, except that э is used at the beginning of a word (ex. Эрон, " Iran"). In Mongolian, э is the standard letter to represent the /ɛ/ phoneme. It is often written doubled to represent the /eː/ phoneme. Е, however, is only used in the few Mongolian words containing it, Russian loanwords and Russian-style transcriptions of foreign names.


Related letters and other similar characters

* Е е : Cyrillic letter Ye * Є є : Cyrillic letter Ukrainian Ye * Ε ε : Greek letter Epsilon * E e : Latin letter E * É é :
Latin letter E with acute Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of th ...
* Ė ė : Latin letter E with overdot - a Lithuanian letter * ℈ : Scruple (
Apothecaries' system The apothecaries' system, or apothecaries' weights and measures, is a historical system of mass and volume units that were used by physicians and apothecaries for medical prescriptions and also sometimes by scientists."Medicinal-Gewicht, Apotheke ...
)


Computing codes


References


External links

* *{{Wiktionary-inline, э Vowel letters