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
АБВГҐДЂ
ЃЕЀЁЄЖЗ
З́ЅИЍІЇЙ
ЈКЛЉМНЊ
ОПРСС́ТЋ
ЌУЎФХЦЧ
ЏШЩЪЫЬЭ
ЮЯ
Non-Slavic letters
ӐА̄А̊А̃ӒӒ̄Ә
Ә́Ә̃ӚӔҒГ̧Г̑
Г̄ҔӺӶԀԂ
ԪԬӖЕ̄Е̃
Ё̄Є̈ӁҖӜԄ
ҘӞԐԐ̈ӠԆӢ
И̃ҊӤҚӃҠҞ
ҜԞԚӅԮԒԠ
ԈԔӍӉҢԨӇ
ҤԢԊО̆О̃О̄Ӧ
ӨӨ̄ӪҨԤҦР̌
ҎԖҪԌҬ
ԎУ̃ӮӰӰ́Ӳ
ҮҮ́ҰХ̑ҲӼӾ
ҺҺ̈ԦҴҶ
ӴӋҸҼ
ҾЫ̆Ы̄ӸҌЭ̆Э̄
Э̇ӬӬ́Ӭ̄Ю̆Ю̈Ю̈́
Ю̄Я̆Я̄Я̈ԘԜӀ
Archaic letters
ҀѺ
ОУѠѼѾ
ѢѤѦ
ѪѨѬѮ
ѰѲѴѶ

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 Йовович (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.

Note that breve in Й may be quite different from ordinary breve, the former having a thinner central part and thicker ends (the opposite holds for ordinary breve). This is often seen in serif fonts, cf. Й (Cyrillic Short I) and Ŭ (Latin U with breve).

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
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