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Ef (Cyrillic)
Letter of the Cyrillic alphabet
Letter of the Cyrillic alphabet
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| letter | Ф ф |
| script | Cyrillic |
| type | Alphabet |
| typedesc | ic |
| name | Ef () |
| image | Cyrillic letter Ef - uppercase and lowercase.svg |
| phonemes | |
| number | 500 (Cyrillic numerals) |
| fam1 | Φ φ |
| language | Old Church Slavonic |
| unicode | U+0424, U+0444 |
| equivalents | F f |
Ef or Fe (Ф ф; italics: Ф ф or Ф ф; italics: Ф ф) is a Cyrillic letter, commonly representing the voiceless labiodental fricative , like the pronunciation of in fill, flee or fall. The Cyrillic letter Ef is romanized as .
History
The Cyrillic letter Ef was derived from the Greek letter Phi (Φ φ). It merged with and eliminated the letter Fita (Ѳ) in the Russian alphabet in 1918.
The name of Ef in the Early Cyrillic alphabet is {{Script|Cyrs|фрьтъ}} ( or ), in later Church Slavonic and Russian form it became фертъ ().
In the Cyrillic numeral system, Ef has a value of 500.
Appearance and usage in Slavic languages
The Slavic languages have almost no native words containing . This sound did not exist in Proto-Indo-European (PIE). It arose in Greek and Latin from PIE bʰ (which yielded Slavic ). 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 via Grimm's law, 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 languages
Example borrowings in Russian:
- from Greek: катастрофа, "catastrophe" (from φ); Фёдор, "Theodore" (from θ; cf. Bulgarian Тодор)
- from Latin: федерация, "federation"; эффект, "effect"
- from German: картофель, "potato" (from Kartoffel); фунт, "pound" (from Pfund)
- from Dutch: флаг, "flag"
- from English: офис, "office"
- from French: Франция, "France"
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 : Serbian уфати 'to hope' (cf. Church Slavonic уповати 'to hope')
- from хв : Macedonian сфати '(he) understands' (cf. Church Slavonic схватити 'to take, to catch'), Russian дрофа 'bustard' (cf. Ukrainian дрохва 'bustard')
- from кв : Russian филин 'eagle-owl' (cf. Ukrainian квилити 'to cry')
- from х : Russian toponym Фили 'Fili' (from хилый 'sickly')
Slavic languages
Ef is the 21st letter of the Bulgarian alphabet; the 22nd letter of the Russian alphabet; the 23rd letter of the Belarusian alphabet; the 25th letter of the Serbian and Ukrainian alphabet; and the 26th letter of the Macedonian alphabet. It represents the consonant unless it is before a palatalizing vowel, when it represents .
Computing codes
|0424|name1=Cyrillic Capital Letter Ef |0444|name2=Cyrillic Small Letter Ef
Cultural references
The phraseologism "стоять фертом", "to stand as " means "to stand with arms akimbo".
References
References
- (September 2003). "The Slavonic Languages". Routledge.
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