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
Ԫ Ԭ Ӗ Е̄ Е̃
Ё̄ Є̈ Ӂ Җ 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 Ҭ
Ԏ У̃ Ӯ Ӱ Ӱ́ Ӳ
Ү Ү́ Ұ Х̑ Ҳ Ӽ Ӿ
Һ Һ̈ Ԧ Ҵ Ҷ
Ӵ Ӌ Ҹ Ҽ
Ҿ Ы̆ Ы̄ Ӹ Ҍ Э̆ Э̄
Э̇ Ӭ Ӭ́ Ӭ̄ Ю̆ Ю̈ Ю̈́
Ю̄ Я̆ Я̄ Я̈ Ԙ Ԝ Ӏ
Archaic letters
Ҁ Ѻ
ОУ Ѡ Ѽ Ѿ
Ѣ Ѥ Ѧ
Ѫ Ѩ Ѭ Ѯ
Ѱ Ѳ Ѵ Ѷ

Short I or Yot 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

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

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