E (Cyrillic)

Origin

The letter originated in the thirteenth century as a variant of , at first, according to Đorđić in superscripted line-final position, but by the end of the century elsewhere as well. In the following centuries it continued to appear sporadically as an uncommon variant of , but not later than in the fifteenth century amongst the Eastern Slavs it began to be used to indicate initial (uniotated) . According to Yefim Karskiy, "Western Russian ustav knows , e.g. in Miscellany of the 15th c. from the Public Library (manuscr. #391) ( etc.), chronicles of 15th-16th cc., Miscellany of Poznań (16th c.), Statut of 1588... It is difficult to say whether it has been developed here independently or it came from South Slavic manuscripts, where occurs as early as in 13-14th cc." Although the revision of Meletius Smotrytsky’s grammar published in Moscow in 1648 does not include in its alphabet, it does consistently write (Etymologia), in contrast to in the first edition of 1619. It was by no means confined to this function in the period, however, as the prevalent spellings (beside ) for modern Russian реестр, майор demonstrate.

Usage

In modern Russian

In the specimens of the civil script presented to Peter I in 1708, forms of were included among forms of , but the latter was deleted by Peter. The former was used in some early 18th-century Russian texts, but some authorities of the period considered it superfluous, like Mikhail Lomonosov, on the grounds that "the letter Е, having several different pronunciations, could serve in the pronoun етотъ and the interjection ей" and that it was inappropriate to introduce letters solely for use in loanwords. However, the inclusion of in its modern function, in the Russian Academy's Dictionary of 1789–94, marks the point from which it can be considered as an established part of the Russian orthographical standard.

There were still some objections to the letter even as late as 1817, when M. T. Kačenovskij was questioning whether "yet another hard э" was necessary when the language already had "a soft ѣ and a hard е".

In contemporary Russian, is used to represent , in initial position (электричество 'electricity') and postvocalic position (дуэль 'duel'). Among such words are only a few native Russian roots: эт- (это 'this is', этот/эта/это 'this (m./f./n.)', эти 'these', поэтому 'thus' etc.), эк- (экий 'what a'), эдак-/этак- (эдак/этак 'that way', эдакий/этакий 'sort of') and a few interjections like эй 'hey', э 'uh, oh', э-э-э 'uh'.

Even though Russian contains a significant number of loanwords in which occurs after a hard (unpalatalised) consonant, it is still the practice to use the letter for , : теннис, сепсис (tennis, sepsis). There are few traditional exceptions to that practice among common noun loanwords:

• the original list (the first half of the 20th century) contained just three words:
  • мэр 'mayor', from French 'maire'
  • пэр 'peer (a noble)', from French 'pair'
  • сэр 'sir', from English or from Old French 'sieur'
• two later additions (1950s-1960s):
  • мэтр 'master, skilled artist', from French 'maître'
  • пленэр, from French '(en) plein air'
• new additions (1980s and later) are more numerous:
  • рэкет 'racket, racketeering', from English
  • рэп 'rap (music)', from English
  • фэнтези 'fantasy (literature)', from English
  • and several others; spelling of new words sometimes varies and dictionaries often give variants or contradict one another (like хетчбэк 'hatchback (car)' in spelling dictionary vs хетчбек/хэтчбек in explanatory dictionary http://www.gramota.ru/slovari/dic/?lop=x&bts=x&zar=x&ag=x&ab=x&sin=x&lv=x&az=x&pe=x&word=%F5%3F%F2%F7*).

In proper nouns, however, may occur after consonants: Улан-Удэ 'Ulan-Ude' and Блэр 'Blair'. However, many such loanwords are spelled with : Блерио 'Blériot' (a French aviator). That is the case especially for names that entered the language centuries ago like: Берлин, 'Berlin'. The use of is much more frequent for names from non-European languages: Мао Цзэдун 'Mao Zedong'.

The letter is also used in Russian to render initial œ in foreign words: thus Eure (the river in France) is written Эр. After consonants this is transcribed as . In the 19th century, some writers used for that sound in both positions, but that was never accepted as standard orthography. (The letter was re-invented in the 20th century for Kildin Sami.) It is also used to represent a stressed in languages such as English, which can cause a problem of conflating with English (for example, "Addison" and "Edison" would be spelled the same). However, in other positions, Russian also uses for and for .

In modern Belarusian

Unlike Russian, Belarusian has many native words in which it occurs after a hard consonant. Moreover, its orthography was standardized later than that of Russian (which reached its present form at the beginning of the 20th century), on the basis of the spoken language rather than historical tradition. Consequently, and are written in accordance with pronunciation: for initial and after hard consonants, for initial and postvocalic and after soft consonants. That also means that is much more frequent in Belarusian than in Russian.

In other languages

In Tuvan the Cyrillic letter can be written as a double vowel.

In the Tajik language, the letters е and э have the same function, except that э is used at the beginning of a word (ex. Эрон, "Iran").

In Mongolian, э is the standard letter to represent the /ɛ/ phoneme. When doubled, it represents the /eː/ phoneme. Е, however, is only used in the few Mongolian words containing it, Russian loanwords and Russian-style transcriptions of foreign names.

Related letters and other similar characters

• Е е : Cyrillic letter Ye
• Є є : Cyrillic letter Ukrainian Ye
• Ε ε : Greek letter Epsilon
• E e : Latin letter E
• É é : Latin letter E with acute
• Ė ė : Latin letter E with overdot - a Lithuanian letter
• ℈ : Scruple (Apothecaries' system)
• € : Euro Sign Code positions

Computing codes

|042D|name1=Cyrillic Capital Letter E |044D|name2=Cyrillic Small Letter E

References

References

1. Петар Ђорђић, ''Историја српске ћирилице'', Београд, 2-a изд., 1987, p.87
2. Cf ''Банишко евангелие: среднобългарски паметник от XIII век'', подгот. за печат с увод и коментар Е. Дограмаджиева и Б. Райков, София, 1981, pp.13, 341
3. Published in the vol. 17 of the [[Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles]].
4. "Западнорусский устав знает ''э'', напр. в Сб. XV в. Публ. б. № 391 ({{Slavonic. экъсеквїє и др.), летописях XV—XVI вв., Позн. Сб. XVI в., Статуте 1588... Трудно сказать, развилось ли оно здесь самостоятельно или же зашло из югославянских рукописей, где ''э'' встречается уже в XIII—XIV вв." (Е. Ф. Карский, ''Белорусы: Язык белорусского народа'', вып. 1, М., 1955, р. 69). See also pp. 165-166 for more details and examples.
5. ''Россійская Грамматика'' Михайла Ломоносова, печатана в Санктпетербургѣ, при Императорской Академїи Наук, 1755 года, p.43
6. [М. Т.] Каченовский, “Исторический взгляд на Грамматику Славянских наречий”, ''Труды О-ва любителей Российской словесности при имп. Московском университете'', ч.IX (1817), pp.17-46. He was referring specifically to the spelling {{Slavonic. Этѷмоло́ґїѧ in the 1648 grammar mentioned above: {{lang. ru. “Каким образом появляется здесь обратное Э, которое в азбуке Мелетием обойдено? Разве нужно, при мягком Ѣ, при твердом Е, еще одно твердое Э?” so how far his remarks extend to the Russian of his own day is debatable. The reference to "a soft ѣ and a hard е" was referring to the pronunciation of Church Slavonic current in his day (which is still maintained by the [[Old Believers]]). That may have still been regarded as the literary ideal: see Б. А. Успенский, ''Архаическая система церковнославянского произношения'', Москва, 1968, especially pp.29-35.
7. Я. К. Грот, ''Русское правописание,'' 19-ое изд., Санктпетербург, 1910, p.78
8. "Tuvan language, alphabet and pronunciation". omniglot.com.
9. (24 July 2013). "Compendium of the World's Languages". Routledge.
10. "Encyclopedia Irancia, TAJIK PERSIAN".