E (Cyrillic)

File:Азбука красноармейца. Э.jpg

E, from the Alphabet Book оf the Red Army Soldier (1921)

E (Э э; italics: Э э or 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 Template:IPAblink and Template:IPAblink, as the e in the word "editor". In other Slavic languages that use the Cyrillic script, the sounds are represented by Ye (Е е), which in Russian and Belarusian represents in initial and postvocalic position or with palatalization of the preceding consonant. This letter closely resembles and should not be confused with the older Cyrillic letter Ukrainian Ye (Є є), of which Э is a backwards version.

In Cyrillic Moldovan, which was used in the Moldovan SSR during the Soviet Union and is still used in Transnistria, the letter corresponds to ă in the Latin Romanian alphabet, and the phoneme [ə]. It is also used in the Cyrillic alphabets used by Mongolian and many Uralic, Caucasian and Turkic languages of the former Soviet Union.

Origin

The letter Template:Angle bracket originated in the thirteenth century as a variant of Template:Angle bracket, at first, according to Đorđić in superscripted line-final position, but by the end of the century elsewhere as well. In the following centuries it continued to appear sporadically as an uncommon variant of Template:Angle bracket, but not later than in the fifteenth century amongst the Eastern Slavs it began to be used to indicate initial (uniotated) Template:IPAblink. According to Yefim Karskiy, "Western Russian ustav knows Template:Angle bracket, e.g. in Miscellany of the 15th c. from the Public Library (manuscr. #391) (экъсеквїє etc.), chronicles of 15th-16th cc., Miscellany of Poznań (16th c.), Statut of 1588... It is difficult to say whether it has been developed here independently or it came from South Slavic manuscripts, where Template:Angle bracket occurs as early as in 13-14th cc." Although the revision of Meletius Smotrytsky’s grammar published in Moscow in 1648 does not include Template:Angle bracket in its alphabet, it does consistently write Этѷмолѻ́гїа (Etymologia), in contrast to Єтѷмоло́ґїѧ in the first edition of 1619. It was by no means confined to this function in the period, however, as the prevalent spellings реэстръ, маэоръ (beside маеоръ, маіоръ) for modern Russian , demonstrate.

Usage

In modern Russian

File:Russian alphabet (marks by Peter I), page 4.gif

Specimens of the civil script with annotations by Peter I.

In the specimens of the civil script presented to Peter I in 1708, forms of Template:Angle bracket were included among forms of Template:Angle bracket, but the latter was deleted by Peter. The former was used in some early 18th-century Russian texts, but some authorities of the period considered it superfluous, like Mikhail Lomonosov, on the grounds that "the letter Е, having several different pronunciations, could serve in the pronoun and the interjection " and that it was inappropriate to introduce letters solely for use in loanwords. However, the inclusion of Template:Angle bracket in its modern function, in the Russian Academy's Dictionary of 1789–94, marks the point from which it can be considered as an established part of the Russian orthographical standard.

There were still some objections to the letter even as late as 1817, when M. T. Kačenovskij was questioning whether "yet another hard э" was necessary when the language already had "a soft ѣ and a hard е".

In contemporary Russian, Template:Angle bracket is used to represent , in initial position ( 'electricity') and postvocalic position ( 'duel'). Among such words are only a few native Russian roots: (это 'this is', этот/эта/это 'this (m./f./n.)', эти 'these', поэтому 'thus' etc.), (экий 'what a'), / (эдак/этак 'that way', эдакий/этакий 'sort of') and a few interjections like 'hey', 'uh, oh', 'uh'.

Even though Russian contains a significant number of loanwords in which occurs after a hard (unpalatalised) consonant, it is still the practice to use the letter Template:Angle bracket for , : (tennis, sepsis). There are few traditional exceptions to that practice among common noun loanwords:

• the original list (the first half of the 20th century) contained just three words:
  • 'mayor', from French
  • 'peer (a noble)', from French
  • 'sir', from English or from Old French
• two later additions (1950s-1960s):
  • 'master, skilled artist', from French
  • , from French
• new additions (1980s and later) are more numerous:
  • 'racket, racketeering', from English
  • 'rap (music)', from English
  • 'fantasy (literature)', from English
  • and several others; spelling of new words sometimes varies and dictionaries often give variants or contradict one another (like 'hatchback (car)' in spelling dictionary vs / in explanatory dictionary [1]).

In proper nouns, however, Template:Angle bracket may occur after consonants: 'Ulan-Ude' and 'Blair'. However, many such loanwords are spelled with Template:Angle bracket: 'Blériot' (a French aviator). That is the case especially for names that entered the language centuries ago like: , 'Berlin'. The use of Template:Angle bracket is much more frequent for names from non-European languages: 'Mao Zedong'.

The letter Template:Angle bracket is also used in Russian to render initial œ in foreign words: thus (the river in France) is written . After consonants this is transcribed as Template:Angle bracket. In the 19th century, some writers used Template:Angle bracket for that sound in both positions, but that was never accepted as standard orthography. (The letter Template:Angle bracket was re-invented in the 20th century for Kildin Sami.) It is also used to represent a stressed Template:IPAc-en in languages such as English, which can cause a problem of conflating Template:IPAc-en with English Template:IPAc-en (for example, "Addison" and "Edison" would be spelled the same). However, in other positions, Russian also uses Template:Angle bracket for Template:IPAc-en and Template:Angle bracket for Template:IPAc-en.

In modern Belarusian

Unlike Russian, Belarusian has many native words in which it occurs after a hard consonant. Moreover, its orthography was standardized later than that of Russian (which reached its present form at the beginning of the 20th century), on the basis of the spoken language rather than historical tradition. Consequently, Template:Angle bracket and Template:Angle bracket are written in accordance with pronunciation: Template:Angle bracket for initial and after hard consonants, Template:Angle bracket for initial and postvocalic and after soft consonants. That also means that Template:Angle bracket is much more frequent in Belarusian than in Russian.

In other languages

In Tuvan the Cyrillic letter can be written as a double vowel.

In the Tajik language, the letters е and э have the same function, except that э is used at the beginning of a word (ex. Эрон, "Iran").

In Mongolian, э is the standard letter to represent the /ɛ/ phoneme. When doubled, it represents the /eː/ phoneme. Е, however, is only used in the few Mongolian words containing it, Russian loanwords and Russian-style transcriptions of foreign names.

Related letters and other similar characters

• Е е : Cyrillic letter Ye
• Є є : Cyrillic letter Ukrainian Ye
• Ε ε : Greek letter Epsilon
• E e : Latin letter E
• É é : Latin letter E with acute
• Ė ė : Latin letter E with overdot - a Lithuanian letter
• ℈ : Scruple (Apothecaries' system)
• € : Euro Sign

External links

• Template:Sister-inline
• Template:Sister-inline