Dotted I (Cyrillic)

The dotted і (І і; italics: І і), also called Ukrainian I, decimal i (after its former numeric value) or soft-dotted i, is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It commonly represents the close front unrounded vowel /i/, like the pronunciation of ⟨i⟩ in English "machine". It is used in the orthographies of Belarusian, Kazakh, Khakas, Komi, Carpathian Rusyn and Ukrainian and quite often, but not always, is the equivalent of the Cyrillic letter і (И и) as used in Russian and other languages. It was also used in Russian before the spelling reform of 1918.

In Ukrainian, the dotted і is the twelfth letter of the alphabet and represents the sound [i] in writing. Ukrainian uses и to represent the sound [ɪ]. In Belarusian, the dotted i is the tenth letter of the alphabet. It represents [i]. The two Carpathian Rusyn standard varieties use і, и and ы for three different sounds: /i/, /ɪ/ and /ɨ/, respectively. In Komi, і occurs solely after the consonants д, з, л, н, с, and т and doesn't palatalize them, while и does. In Kazakh and Khakas, і represents /ɘ/.

Just like the Latin letters I/i and J/j, the dot above the letter appears only in its lowercase form and only if that letter already is not combined with a diacritic above it (notably the diaeresis, used in Ukrainian to note the ї letter of its alphabet). Even when the lowercase form is present without any other diacritic, the dot is not always rendered in historic texts (the same historically applied to the Roman letters i and j). Some modern texts and font styles, except for cursive styles, still discard the "soft" dot on the lowercase letter, because the text is readable without it. However, the current official rules of Belarusian orthography (2008) state that the letter ⟨і⟩ is undotted in printed uppercase, but should be dotted in lowercase and in handwritten uppercase.

The Cyrillic soft-dotted letter і was derived from the Greek letter iota (Ι ι). The dot came later with some typefaces through Western European influence, which similarly affected other Cyrillic letters such as а and е. The name of this letter in the Early Cyrillic alphabet was и (i), meaning "and". In the Cyrillic numeral system, soft-dotted І had a value of 10.

In the early Cyrillic alphabet, there was little or no distinction between the Cyrillic letter И, derived from the Greek letter eta, and the soft-dotted letter і. They both remained in the alphabetical repertoire, since they represented different numbers in the Cyrillic numeral system, eight and ten, respectively. They are, therefore, sometimes referred to as octal I and decimal I.

According to critics of the 1918 reform,^[who?] the choice of Ии as the only letter to represent that side and the removal of Іі defeated the purpose of "simplifying" the language, as Ии occupies more space and, furthermore, is sometimes indistinguishable from Шш.

The reform also created several homographs, which used to be spelled differently. Examples: есть/ѣсть (to be/eat) and миръ/міръ (peace/the Universe) became есть and мир in both instances.

In Macedonian, this letter, or the letter Й, was used by Macedonian authors to represent the sound /j/ until the introduction of the letter Ј. In Romanian the letter was used until 1860s when it gradually switched to modern Latin alphabet. In Bulgarian the letter was used until 1878, while in Ossetian it was used until 1923.