Ukrainian I: Encyclopedia - Ukrainian I

Ukrainian I

I (І, і) (also called decimal I, or dotted I) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, used in the Belarusian and Ukrainian languages. It represents the vowel sound [i], and is the equivalent of the Russian и. It is derived from the Greek letter iota (Ι, ι, pronounced [i]).

In the early Cyrillic alphabet there was little or no distinction between the letters и (izhe) and і (i), descended from the Greek letters η (eta) and ι (iota). They both remained in the alphabetical repertoire because they represented different numbers in the Cyrillic numeral system, eight and ten, and are therefore sometimes referred to as octal I and decimal I.

I (decimal I, dotted I) also used to be in the Russian alphabet before 1918, when a significant reform of the Russian orthography came into effect. For the rules governing the usage of it in the "old" Russian orthography, see Russian alphabet#Letters eliminated in 1918.

See also

• И, Ї, Short I, Ј

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Ukrainian I", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki