Yi (Cyrillic)

Not to be confused with the Latin letter Ï.

"Ï (Cyrillic)" redirects here. For the Cyrillic I with diaeresis, see I with diaeresis (Cyrillic).

Yi, Ji, or Dotted I with Diaeresis (Ї ї; italics: Ї ї) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. Yi is derived from the Greek letter iota with diaeresis.

Yi
Usage
Writing system	Cyrillic
Type	Alphabetic
Sound values	[ji]
Other
Associated numbers	10 (Cyrillic numerals)
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

It was the initial variant of the Cyrillic letter Іі, which saw change from two dots to one in 18th century, possibly inspired by similar Latin letter i. Later two variants of the letter separated to become distinct letters in the Ukrainian alphabet.

It is used in the Ukrainian alphabet, the Pannonian Rusyn alphabet, and the Prešov Rusyn alphabet of Slovakia, where it represents the iotated vowel sound /ji/, like the pronunciation of ⟨yea⟩ in "yeast". As the historical variant of the Cyrillic Іі it represented either /i/ (as i in pizza) or /j/ (as y in yen).

In various romanization systems of Ukrainian, ї is represented by Latin letters i or yi (word-initially),^[1][2] yi,^[3] ji, or even ï.^[4]

It was formerly also used in the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet in the late 1700s and early 1800s, where it represented the sound /j/; in this capacity, it was introduced by Dositej Obradović but eventually replaced with the modern letter ј by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić.^[5][6]

In Ukrainian, the letter was introduced as part of the Zhelekhivka orthography, in Yevhen Zhelekhivsky's Ukrainian–German dictionary (2 volumes, 1885–86).

Related letters and other similar characters

• Ӥ ӥ : Cyrillic letter I with diaeresis
• Ï ï : Latin letter I with diaeresis
• Ι ι : Greek letter Ι
• Ј ј : Cyrillic letter J

Computing codes

Character information

Preview	Ї		ї
Unicode name	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YI		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YI
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	1031	U+0407	1111	U+0457
UTF-8	208 135	D0 87	209 151	D1 97
Numeric character reference	Ї	Ї	ї	ї
Named character reference	Ї		ї
KOI8-U	183	B7	167	A7
Code page 855	141	8D	140	8C
Code page 866	244	F4	245	F5
Windows-1251	175	AF	191	BF
ISO-8859-5	167	A7	247	F7
Macintosh Cyrillic	186	BA	187	BB