The Cyrillic letterІ was derived from the Greek letter Eta. This is why the earliest shape of Cyrillic was. The name of the Cyrillic letter І in the Early Cyrillic alphabet was , meaning "which". In the Cyrillic numeral system, the Cyrillic letter І had a value of 8, corresponding to the Greek letter Eta. In the Early Cyrillic alphabet there was little or no distinction between the letter and the letter which was derived from the Greek letter Iota. They both remained in the alphabetical repertoire because they represented different numbers in the Cyrillic numeral system, eight and ten. Today they co-exist in Church Slavonic, with no pronunciation difference; and in Ukrainian, representing actual pronunciation differences. Other modern orthographies for Slavic languages eliminated one of the two letters in alphabet reforms of the 19th or 20th centuries: Russian, Macedonian, Serbian and Bulgarian languages use only, and Belarusian uses only.
Form
Originally, Cyrillic had the shape identical to the capital Greek letter Eta. Later, the middle stroke was turned counterclockwise, resulting in the modern form resembling a mirrored capital Latin letter N . But the style of the two letters is not fully identical: in roman fonts, has heavier vertical strokes and serifs on all four corners, whereas has a heavier diagonal stroke and lacks a serif on the bottom-right corner. In roman and oblique fonts, the lowercase letter has the same shape as the uppercase letter. In italic fonts, the lowercase letter looks like the italic form of the lowercase Latin U . Both capital and small hand-written forms of the Cyrillic letter I look like hand-written forms of the Latin letter U.
Usage
Since the 1930s, has been the tenth letter of the Russian alphabet, and in Russian, it represents, like the i in machine except after some consonants. In Russian, it typically denotes a preceding soft consonant and, therefore, is considered the soft counterpart to but, unlike other "soft" vowels, in isolation is not preceded by the semivowel. In Russian, the letter has been seen combined in the digraph to represent before its existence around 1783. There still exist some apparent confusion in the transcription of some foreign words. pronounced as in , and , because in Russian, the sound is inarticulable after "zh", "sh" and "ts". In the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet is the ninth letter, representing the sound. It also occurs with a grave accent, ѝ, in order to distinguish orthographically the conjuction and the short form of the indirect object . In Kazakh, is used for and in native words and for in loanwords, while is used for in native words. In Belarusian, the letter is not used at all and the sound is represented by the letter, also known as Belorusian-Ukrainian I. The letter is the eleventh letter of the Ukrainian alphabet and it represents sound, which is a separate phoneme in Ukrainian. The Ukrainian can be transliterated to other languages using Cyrillic script by both and, due to lack of common transliteration rule. Speakers of other Slavic languages can perceive Ukrainian as either, or sometimes even . The sound in Ukrainian is represented by letter, the same as in Belarusian. In the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, is the tenth letter of the alphabet. In Serbian, it represents, like the i in machine or i in bill. In the Latin Serbian alphabet, the same vowel is represented by "I/i". In Macedonian, it is the eleventh letter of the alphabet and represents the sound. It is transliterated from Russian as or from Ukrainian as or, depending on the romanization system. See romanization of Russian and romanization of Ukrainian. In Tuvan the Cyrillic letter can be written as a double vowel. It is often seen in Faux Cyrillic as a substitute for the Latin alphabetical letter N.
Accented forms and derived letters
The vowel represented by, as well as almost any other Slavonic vowel, can be stressed or unstressed. Stressed variants are sometimes graphically marked by acute, grave, double grave or circumflexaccent marks. Special Serbian texts also use with a macron to represent long unstressed variant of the sound. Serbian with a circumflex can be unstressed as well; then, it represents the genitive case of plural forms to distinguish them from other similar forms. Modern Church Slavonic orthography uses the smooth breathing sign above the initial vowels. It can be combined with acute or grave accents, if necessary. None of those combinations is considered as a separate letter of respective alphabet, but one of them has an individual code position in Unicode. with a breve forms the letter for the consonant or a similar semivowel, like the y in English "yes." The form has been used regularly in Church Slavonic since the 16th century, but it officially became a separate letter of alphabet much later. The original name of was I s kratkoy, later I kratkoye in Russian. It is known similarly as I kratko in Bulgarian but as Yot in Ukrainian. Cyrillic alphabets of non-Slavic languages have additional -based letters, like or.
