Short I

For the sound in English sometimes represented by ĭ, see near-close near-front unrounded vowel.

Cyrillic letter Short I
The Cyrillic script
Slavic letters
А Б В Г Ґ Д Ђ Ѓ Е Ѐ Ё Є Ж З З́ Ѕ И Ѝ І Ї Й Ј К Л Љ М Н Њ О П Р С С́ Т Ћ Ќ У Ў Ф Х Ц Ч Џ Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я
Non-Slavic letters
Ӑ А̄ А̊ А̃ Ӓ Ӓ̄ Ә Ә́ Ә̃ Ӛ Ӕ Ғ Г̧ Г̑ Г̄ Ҕ Ӻ Ӷ Ԁ Ԃ Ꚃ Ꚁ Ꚉ Ԫ Ԭ Ӗ Е̄ Е̃ Ё̄ Є̈ Ӂ Җ Ꚅ Ӝ Ԅ Ҙ Ӟ Ԑ Ԑ̈ Ӡ Ԇ Ӣ И̃ Ҋ Ӥ Қ Ӄ Ҡ Ҟ Ҝ Ԟ Ԛ Ӆ Ԯ Ԓ Ԡ Ԉ Ԕ Ӎ Ӊ Ң Ԩ Ӈ Ҥ Ԣ Ԋ О̆ О̃ О̄ Ӧ Ө Ө̄ Ӫ Ҩ Ԥ Ҧ Р̌ Ҏ Ԗ Ҫ Ԍ Ꚑ Ҭ Ꚋ Ꚍ Ԏ У̃ Ӯ Ӱ Ӱ́ Ӳ Ү Ү́ Ұ Х̑ Ҳ Ӽ Ӿ Һ Һ̈ Ԧ Ꚕ Ҵ Ꚏ Ҷ Ӵ Ӌ Ҹ Ꚓ Ꚗ Ꚇ Ҽ Ҿ Ы̆ Ы̄ Ӹ Ҍ Э̆ Э̄ Э̇ Ӭ Ӭ́ Ӭ̄ Ю̆ Ю̈ Ю̈́ Ю̄ Я̆ Я̄ Я̈ Ԙ Ԝ Ӏ
Archaic letters
Ꙁ Ꙃ Ꙅ Ꙇ Ꙉ Ҁ Ѻ ОУ Ꙋ Ѡ Ѽ Ꙍ Ѿ Ꙏ Ѣ Ꙑ Ꙓ Ꙕ Ꙗ Ѥ Ѧ Ꙙ Ѫ Ꙛ Ѩ Ꙝ Ѭ Ѯ Ѱ Ѳ Ѵ Ѷ Ꙟ Ꙡ Ꙣ Ꙥ Ꙧ Ꙩ Ꙫ Ꙭ ꙮ Ꚙ Ꚛ
List of Cyrillic letters Cyrillic digraphs

Short I or Yot (Й й; italics: Й й) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It is made of the Cyrillic letter И with a breve.

Short I represents the palatal approximant /j/ like the pronunciation of ⟨y⟩ in toy.

Depending on the romanization system in use and the Slavic language that is under examination, it can be romanized as ⟨y⟩ (the most common), ⟨j⟩, ⟨i⟩ or ⟨ĭ⟩ (probably the least common).

For more details, see romanization of Russian, romanization of Ukrainian and romanization of Bulgarian.

History

Active use of ⟨Й⟩ (or, rather, the breve over ⟨И⟩) began around the 15th and the 16th centuries. Since the middle of the 17th century, the differentiation between ⟨И⟩ and ⟨Й⟩ is obligatory in the Russian variant of Church Slavonic orthography (used for the Russian language as well). During the alphabet reforms of Peter I, all diacritic marks were removed from the Russian writing system, but shortly after his death, in 1735, the distinction between ⟨И⟩ and ⟨Й⟩ was restored. ⟨Й⟩ was not officially considered a separate letter of the alphabet until the 1930s.

Usage

Language	position in alphabet	name
Belarusian	11th	і нескладовае (I neskladovaye, or "non-syllabic I")
Bulgarian	10th	И кратко (I kratko or "short I")
Russian	11th	И краткое (I kratkoye or "short I")
Ukrainian	14th	йот /jɔt/, й /ɪj/

In Russian, it appears predominantly in diphthongs like /ij/ in широкий (shirokiy 'wide'), /aj/ in край (kray 'end', 'krai'), /ej/ in долей (doley 'portion'), /oj/ in горой (goroy 'mountain'), and /uj/ in буйство (buystvo 'rage'). It is used in other positions only in foreign words, such as Йopк (York), including fellow Slavic words like Йoвoвич (Yovovich).

In Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian, the Cyrillic letter Ј is used to represent the same sound. Latin-based Slavonic writing systems, such as Polish, Czech and the Latin version of Serbian and Croatian use the Latin letter J (not the letter Y, as in English or French), for that purpose.

Related letters and other similar characters

• И и : Cyrillic letter I
• J j : Latin letter J
• Ј ј : Cyrillic letter Јe
• Ў ў : Cyrillic letter Short U

Computing codes

Character	Й		й
Unicode name	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SHORT I		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHORT I
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	1049	U+0419	1081	U+0439
UTF-8	208 153	D0 99	208 185	D0 B9
Numeric character reference	Й	Й	й	й
KOI8-R and KOI8-U	234	EA	202	CA
Code page 855	190	BE	189	BD
Code page 866	137	89	169	A9
Windows-1251	201	C9	233	E9
ISO-8859-5	185	B9	217	D9
Macintosh Cyrillic	137	89	233	E9

External links

• The dictionary definition of Й at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of й at Wiktionary