Dotted I (Cyrillic)

The dotted i і; italics: І і), also called decimal і (и десятеричное, after its former numeric value), is a letter of the Cyrillic script.

Cyrillic letter
soft-dotted i
Numeric value:10
Phonetic usage:[i]
The Cyrillic script
Slavic letters
АБВГҐДЂ
ЃЕЀЁЄЖЗ
З́ЅИЍІЇЙ
ЈКЛЉМНЊ
ОПРСС́ТЋ
ЌУЎФХЦЧ
ЏШЩЪЫЬЭ
ЮЯ
Non-Slavic letters
А́А̀ӐА̄А̊А̃Ӓ
Ӓ̄В̌ӘӘ́Ә̃ӚӔ
ҒГ̧Г̑Г̄Г̣Г̌Ҕ
ӺҒ̌ӶԀԂ
Д̆Д̣ԪԬД̆Ӗ
Е̄Е̃Ё̄Є̈ӁҖ
ӜԄҘӞЗ̌З̱З̣
ԐԐ̈ӠԆӢИ̃Ҋ
ӤИ́ҚӃҠҞҜ
ԞК̣ԚӅԮԒԠ
ԈԔӍӉҢԨӇ
ҤԢԊО́О̀О̆О̂
О̃О̄ӦӦ̄ӨӨ̄Ө́
Ө̆ӪҨԤҦР̌Ҏ
ԖҪС̣С̱ԌТ̌Т̣
ҬԎУ̃Ӯ
ӰӰ́ӲҮҮ́ҰХ̣
Х̱Х̮Х̑ҲӼӾҺ
Һ̈ԦҴҶӴ
ӋҸҼҾ
Ы̆Ы̄ӸҌЭ̆Э̄Э̇
ӬӬ́Ӭ̄Ю̆Ю̈Ю̈́Ю̄
Я̆Я̄Я̈ԘԜӀ
Archaic letters
ҀѺ
ѸѠѼѾ
ѢѤѦ
ѪѨѬѮ
ѰѲѴѶ

It commonly represents the close front unrounded vowel /i/ like the pronunciation of ⟨i⟩ in English "machine".

It is used in the orthographies of Belarusian, Kazakh, Khakas, Komi, Carpathian Rusyn and Ukrainian and quite often, but not always, is the equivalent of the Cyrillic letter i и) as used in Russian and other languages.

In Ukrainian І is the twelfth letter of the alphabet and represents the sound [i] in writing. Ukrainian uses и to represent the sound [ɪ].

In Belarusian I is the tenth letter of the alphabet. It represents [i].

The two Carpathian Rusyn standard varieties use і, и and ы for three different sounds: /i/, /ɪ/ and /ɨ/, respectively.

In Komi, і occurs only after the consonants д, з, л, н, с, and т and does not palatalize them while и does. In Kazakh and Khakas, і represents /ɪ/, as in "bit".

In Kazakh, the letter occurs on most native Turkic words. Most of the loanwords use и.

Just like the Latin letters I/i (and J/j), the dot above the letter appears only in its lowercase form and then only if that letter is not combined with a diacritic above it (notably the diaeresis, used in Ukrainian to note the letter yi of its alphabet, and the macron).

Even when the lowercase form is present without any other diacritic, the dot is not always rendered in historic texts (the same historically applied to the Roman letters i and j). Some modern texts and font styles, except for cursive styles, still discard the "soft" dot on the lowercase letter because the text is readable without it.

The letter was also used in Russian before 1918.

History

The Cyrillic soft-dotted letter i was derived from the Greek letter iota (Ι ι).

The name of this letter in the Early Cyrillic alphabet was и (i), meaning "and".

In the Cyrillic numeral system, soft-dotted І had a value of 10.

In the early Cyrillic alphabet, there was little or no distinction between the Cyrillic letter i и), derived from the Greek letter eta, and the soft-dotted letter i. They both remained in the alphabetical repertoire since they represented different numbers in the Cyrillic numeral system, eight and ten, respectively. They are, therefore, sometimes referred to as octal I and decimal I.

Usage

Languages Notes
Belarusian, Kazakh, Khakas, Komi, Carpathian Rusyn, Ukrainian In current use.
Macedonian Either this letter or the letter ⟨Й⟩ was used by Macedonian authors to represent the sound /j/ until the introduction of the letter ⟨Ј⟩.
Russian In use until 1918, when a significant reform of the Russian orthography came into effect.
Bulgarian In use until 1878.
Ossetian In use until 1923.

Rules for usage in Russian (pre-1918)

In early Russian typewriters like this one, there was no key for the digit 1, so the dotted І was used instead. Following the Russian alphabet reform of 1917, a 1 key was added.
  • ⟨і⟩ was used before all vowels and before the semivowel ⟨й⟩ except at the end of a morpheme in a compound word, where ⟨и⟩ was used: пяти + акровый = пятиакровый, (five-acre)
  • ⟨и⟩ was used as the last letter of a word and before consonants except in міръ for "world, universe, local community, commons, society, laity" and words derived from it.

As it turns out, the spelling of the two variants of мир was an artificial distinction to separate two different definitions of what was originally in fact the same word (much as with English "to" vs. "too").

Computing codes

CharacterІі
Unicode nameCYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER
BYELORUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN I
CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER
BYELORUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN I
Encodingsdecimalhexdecimalhex
Unicode1030U+04061110U+0456
UTF-8208 134D0 86209 150D1 96
Numeric character referenceІІіі
KOI8-U182B6166A6
Code page 8551398B1388A
Windows-1251178B2179B3
ISO-8859-5166A6246F6
Macintosh Cyrillic167A7180B4
  • The dictionary definition of І at Wiktionary
  • The dictionary definition of і at Wiktionary
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