Ef (Cyrillic)

The Cyrillic letter Ef was derived from the Greek letter Phi (Φ φ). It merged with an eliminated letter Fita (Ѳ) in the Russian alphabet in 1918.

The name of Ef in the Early Cyrillic alphabet is фрьтъ (fr̥tŭ or frĭtŭ), in later Church Slavonic and Russian form it became фертъ (fert).

In the Cyrillic numeral system, Ef has a value of 500.

The Slavic languages have almost no native words containing /f/. This sound did not exist in Proto-Indo-European (PIE). It arose in Greek and Latin from PIE *bʰ (which yielded Slavic /b/). In some instances in Latin, it represented historical th-fronting and derived from Proto-Indo-European *dʰ. In the Germanic languages, the f sound arose from PIE *p, which remained unchanged in Slavic. The letter ф is thus almost exclusively found in words of foreign origin, especially Greek (from φ and sometimes from θ), Latin, French, German, Dutch, English, and Turkic.

Example borrowings in Russian:

• from Greek: катастрофа, "catastrophe" (from φ); Фёдор, "Theodore" (from θ)
• from Latin: федерация, "federation"; эффект, "effect"
• from German: картофель, "potato" (from Kartoffel); фунт, "pound" (from Pfund)
• from Dutch: флаг, "flag"

The few native Slavic words with this letter (in different languages) are examples of onomatopoeia (like Russian verbs фукать, фыркать etc.) or reflect sporadic pronunciation shifts:

• from пв /pv/: Serbian уфати 'to hope' (cf. Church Slavonic уповати 'to hope')
• from хв /xv/: Macedonian сфати '(he) understands' (cf. Church Slavonic схватити 'to take, to catch'), Russian дрофа 'bustard' (cf. Ukrainian дрохва 'bustard')
• from кв /kv/: Russian филин 'eagle-owl' (cf Ukrainian квилити 'to cry')
• from х /x/: Russian toponym Фили 'Fili' (from хилый 'sickly')

• Φ φ/ϕ : Greek letter Phi
• Ѳ ѳ : Cyrillic letter Fita
• F f : Latin letter F
• Փ : Armenian letter Piwr

• The dictionary definition of Ф at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of ф at Wiktionary