Dotted I (Cyrillic)

Cyrillic letter Dotted I
Cyrillic numerals: 10
Unicode (hex)
majuscule: U+0406
minuscule: U+0456
Cyrillic script Slavic letters
А	Б	В	Г	Ґ	Д	Ђ
Ѓ	Е	Ѐ	Ё	Є	Ж	З
Ѕ	И	Ѝ	І	Ї	Й	Ј
К	Л	Љ	М	Н	Њ	О
П	Р	С	Т	Ћ	Ќ	У
Ў	Ф	Х	Ц	Ч	Џ	Ш
Щ	Ъ	Ы	Ь	Э	Ю	Я
Non-Slavic letters
Ӑ	Ӓ	Ә	Ӛ	Ӕ	Ғ	Ҕ
Ӻ	Ӷ	Ԁ	Ԃ	Ꚉ	Ӗ	Ӂ
Җ	Ӝ	Ԅ	Ҙ	Ӟ	Ԑ	Ӡ
Ԇ	Ӣ	Ҋ	Ӥ	Қ	Ӄ	Ҡ
Ҟ	Ҝ	Ԟ	Ԛ	Ӆ	Ԓ	Ԡ
Ԉ	Ԕ	Ӎ	Ӊ	Ң	Ӈ	Ҥ
Ԣ	Ԋ	Ӧ	Ө	Ӫ	Ҩ	Ԥ
Ҧ	Ҏ	Ԗ	Ҫ	Ԍ	Ҭ	Ԏ
Ӯ	Ӱ	Ӳ	Ү	Ұ	Ҳ	Ӽ
Ӿ	Һ	Ԧ	Ҵ	Ҷ	Ӵ	Ӌ
Ҹ	Ꚇ	Ҽ	Ҿ	Ӹ	Ҍ	Ӭ
Ԙ	Ԝ	Ӏ
Archaic letters
Ҁ	Ѻ	Ѹ	Ѡ	Ѿ	Ѣ	Ꙓ
Ꙗ	Ѥ	Ѧ	Ѫ	Ѩ	Ѭ	Ѯ
Ѱ	Ѳ	Ѵ	Ѷ	Ꙟ
List of Cyrillic letters
Cyrillic digraphs

Dotted I (І і; italics: І і), also called Decimal I, is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.

It commonly represents the close front unrounded vowel /i/, like the pronunciation of ‹i› in "machine".

It is used in the orthographies of the Belarusian, Kazakh, Khakas, Komi, Rusyn and Ukrainian languages, where it is the equivalent of the Cyrillic letter I (И и) as used in Russian and other languages.

History

Dotted I was derived from the Greek letter Iota (Ι ι).

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

In the Cyrillic numeral system, Dotted I had a value of 10.

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

Usage

Language	Notes
Belarusian	in current use
Bulgarian	in use until 1878
Kazakh	in current use
Khakas	in current use
Komi	in current use
Macedonian	this letter or the letter ‹Й› were 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
Rusyn	in current use
Ukrainian	in current use

Rules for usage in Russian (pre-1918)

• write "i" before all vowels and before semivowel "й"
• write "и" before consonants and as the last letter of a word
• exception 1: write "и" before (semi)vowels in compound words (пятиакровый: пяти+акровый, five-acre)
• exception 2: write "и" in "миръ" for "peace, tranquility, concord, union", and "i" in "мiръ" for "world, universe, local community, commons, society, laity", with all derived words.

The distinction between миръ ("peace") and мiръ ("world") led to the legend that Tolstoy's War and Peace was originally titled "War and (the) World".

Related letters and other similar characters

• Ι ι : Greek letter Iota
• И и : Cyrillic letter I
• Ї ї : Cyrillic letter Yi
• Й й : Cyrillic letter Short I
• Ј ј : Cyrillic letter Јe

Computing codes

character	І		і
Unicode name	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BYELORUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN I		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BYELORUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN I
character encoding	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	1030	0406	1110	0456
UTF-8	208 134	D0 86	209 150	D1 96
Numeric character reference	І	І	і	і
KOI8-U	182	B6	166	A6
Code page 855	139	8B	138	8A
Windows-1251	178	B2	179	B3
ISO-8859-5	166	A6	246	F6
Macintosh Cyrillic	167	A7	180	B4

External links

• The Wiktionary definition of І
• The Wiktionary definition of і