Ye, Je, or Ie (Е е; italics: ''Е'' ''е'') is a letter of the

Cyrillic script 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 languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, ...

. In some languages this letter is called E. It looks like another version of

E (Cyrillic) Э э (Э э; italics: ''Э э''; also known as backwards ye, from Russian , ''ye oborótnoye'', ) is a letter found in three Slavic languages: Russian, Belarusian, and West Polesian. It represents the vowels and , as the e in the wo ...

. It commonly represents the vowel or , like the pronunciation of in "yes". Ye is romanized using the Latin letter E for Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian, Ukrainian and Rusyn, and occasionally Russian (Озеро Байкал, Ozero Baykal), Je for Belarusian (Заслаўе, Zaslaŭje), Ye for Russian (Европа, Yevropa), and Ie occasionally for Russian (Днепр, Dniepr) and Belarusian (Маладзе́чна, Maladziečna). It was derived from the Greek letter epsilon (Ε ε).

Usage

Russian and Belarusian

*At the beginning of a word or after a vowel, Ye represents the phonemic combination (phonetically or ), like the pronunciation of in "yes". Ukrainian uses the letter (see

Ukrainian Ye Ukrainian Ye (Є є; italics: ) 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 alph ...

) in this way. *Following a consonant, Ye indicates that the consonant is palatalized, and represents the vowel (phonetically or ), like the pronunciation of in "yes". In Russian, the letter can follow unpalatalized consonants, especially , , and . In some loanwords, other consonants before (especially , , , , , and ) are also not palatalized, see

. The letter also represents (as in "yogurt") and after palatalized consonants, , and . In these cases, may be used, see

Yo (Cyrillic) Yo, Jo, Io, or just Ë (Ё ё; italics: ; ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In Unicode, the letter is named CYRILLIC CAPITAL/SMALL LETTER IO. In English, the letter Yo is romanized using the Latin '' ë'' (according to the ALA– ...

. In unstressed syllables, represents reduced vowels like , see

Russian phonology This article discusses the phonological system of standard Russian based on the Moscow dialect (unless otherwise noted). For an overview of dialects in the Russian language, see Russian dialects. Most descriptions of Russian describe it as hav ...

and

Vowel reduction in Russian In the pronunciation of the Russian language, several ways of vowel reduction (and its absence) are distinguished between the standard language and dialects. Russian orthography most often does not reflect vowel reduction, which can confuse f ...

Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian, Ukrainian and Rusyn

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

Mongolian

The letter represents the sound at the beginning of words ( yo represents ), 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.

Turkic languages and Tajik

In Turkic languages utilizing the Cyrillic script (such as Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Uzbek) 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/.

Computing codes

External links

* * {{Authority control Vowel letters