Ef or Fe (Ф ф; italics: ''Ф ф'') is a

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking cou ...

letter, commonly representing the

voiceless labiodental fricative The voiceless labiodental fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in a number of spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . Some scholars also posit the voiceless labiodental approx ...

, like the pronunciation of in "fill, flee, or fall". The Cyrillic letter Ef is romanized as . In some languages it is known as Fe.

History

The Cyrillic letter Ef was derived from the Greek letter Phi (Φ φ). It merged with an eliminated letter

Fita Fita (Ѳ ѳ; italics: ) is a letter of the Early Cyrillic alphabet. The shape and the name of the letter are derived from the Greek letter theta (Θ θ). In the ISO 9 system, Ѳ is romanized using F grave accent (F̀ f̀). In the ...

(Ѳ) in the

Russian alphabet The Russian alphabet (russian: ру́сский алфави́т, russkiy alfavit, , label=none, or russian: ру́сская а́збука, russkaya azbuka, label=none, more traditionally) is the script used to write the Russian language. I ...

in 1918. The name of Ef in the

Early Cyrillic alphabet The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is a writing system that was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the late 9th century on the basis of the Greek alphabet for the Slavic people liv ...

is (''fr̥tŭ'' or ''frĭtŭ''), in later Church Slavonic and Russian form it became ''фертъ'' (''fert''). In the Cyrillic numeral system, Ef has a value of 500.

Appearance

The Slavic languages have almost no native words containing . This sound did not exist in

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...

(PIE). It arose in

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

and

Latin 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 the ...

from PIE (which yielded Slavic ). In some instances in Latin, it represented historical

th-fronting ''Th''-fronting is the pronunciation of the English "th" as "f" or "v". When ''th''-fronting is applied, becomes (for example, ''three'' is pronounced as ''free'') and becomes (for example, ''bathe'' is pronounced as ''bave''). (Here "fron ...

and derived from Proto-Indo-European . In the

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, ...

, the f sound arose from PIE , which remained unchanged in Slavic. The letter ф is thus almost exclusively found in words of foreign origin, especially Greek (from ''φ'' and sometimes from ''θ''), Latin, French, German, Dutch, English, and Turkic. Example borrowings in Russian: * from Greek: катастрофа, "catastrophe" (from ''φ''); Фёдор, "Theodore" (from ''θ'') * from Latin: федерация, "federation"; эффект, "effect" * from German: картофель, "potato" (from ''Kartoffel''); фунт, "pound" (from ''Pfund'') * from Dutch: флаг, "flag" The few native Slavic words with this letter (in different languages) are examples of onomatopoeia (like Russian verbs фукать, фыркать etc.) or reflect sporadic pronunciation shifts: * from ''пв'' : Serbian у''ф''ати 'to hope' (cf.

Church Slavonic Church Slavonic (, , literally "Church-Slavonic language"), also known as Church Slavic, New Church Slavonic or New Church Slavic, is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bosnia and Herzeg ...

у''пов''ати 'to hope') * from ''хв'' : Macedonian с''ф''ати '(he) understands' (cf.

с''хв''атити 'to take, to catch'), Russian дро''ф''а 'bustard' (cf. Ukrainian дро''хв''а 'bustard') * from ''кв'' : Russian ''ф''илин 'eagle-owl' (cf Ukrainian ''кв''илити 'to cry') * from ''х'' : Russian

toponym Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of ''toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...

''Ф''или ' Fili' (from ''х''илый 'sickly')

Slavic languages

Ef is the 21st letter of the

Bulgarian alphabet The Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet is used to write the Bulgarian language. The Cyrillic alphabet was originally developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 9th – 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School. It has been used in Bulgaria ...

; the 22nd letter of the

; the 23rd letter of the

Belarusian alphabet The Belarusian alphabet is based on the Cyrillic script and is derived from the alphabet of Old Church Slavonic. It has existed in its modern form since 1918 and has 32 letters. See also Belarusian Latin alphabet and Belarusian Arabic alphabe ...

; the 25th letter of the Serbian and

Ukrainian alphabet The Ukrainian alphabet ( uk, абе́тка, áзбука алфа́ві́т, abetka, azbuka alfavit) is the set of letters used to write Ukrainian, which is the official language of Ukraine. It is one of several national variations of the ...

; and the 26th letter of the Macedonian alphabet. It represents the consonant unless it is before a palatalizing vowel, when it represents .

Related letters and other similar characters

*Φ φ/ϕ : Greek letter Phi *Ѳ ѳ : Cyrillic letter Fita *F f : Latin letter F *Փ : Armenian letter Piwr *Q q Latin letter Q

History

Appearance

Slavic languages

Related letters and other similar characters

Computing codes

External links

References