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I with grave (Cyrillic)

I with grave (majuscule: Ѝ, minuscule: ѝ) is a character representing a stressed variant of regular letter ‹и› in some variants of the Cyrillic writing system. Nevertheless, none of Cyrillic alphabets (either modern or archaic) includes it as a separate letter.

South Slavic languages

Bulgarian and Macedonian

Most regularly ‹Ѝ› is used in Bulgarian and Macedonian languages to distinguish the personal pronoun ѝ ‘her’ from the conjunction и ‘and’, ‘also’, or to prevent ambiguity in other similar cases (much less frequent). When not available, the character ‹ѝ› is often replaced by an ordinary ‹и› (not recommended, but still orthographically correct) or by letter ‹й› (formally, it is considered as spelling error), or even a Latin-based ‹ù›.

New Church Slavonic

In modern (since the 17th century) Russian recension of the Church Slavonic language, ‹Ѝ› (or any other vowel with grave accent) is just an orthographical variant of the same letter with acute accent when used as the last letter of the word.

Serbian

‹Ѝ› (as well as other vowels with acute, grave, circumflex, or double grave accents) can be optionally used in Serbian texts to show one of four possible tones of the stressed syllabe. In cases like прѝкупити ‘to gather’ vs. прику́пити ‘to purchase more’, or ѝскуп ‘redemption’, ‘ransom’ vs. и̏скуп ‘congress’, ‘meeting’, the usage of diacritical marks can also prevent ambiguity. In the Latin variant of Serbo-Croatian writing system (so-called Gajevica), all stress/tone marks are the same, i.e. Cyrillic ‹Ѝ› corresponds to Latin ‹ì› etc.

East Slavic languages

‹Ѝ› (as well as any other vowel with grave accent) can be found in older (up to the first decades of the 20th century) Russian and Ukrainian books as stressed variants of regular (unaccented) vowels, like Russian вѝна ‘wines’ vs. вина̀ ‘guilt’, ‘blame’. Recently, East Slavonic typographies use the acute accent instead of the grave accent to denote the stress: ви́на, вина́.

Stress marks are optional in East Slavic languages languages. They are regularly used only in special books like dictionaries, primers, or textbooks for foreigners as the stress is very unpredictable in all three languages, whereas in general texts they are extremely rare and may help to prevent ambiguity in certain cases or to show pronunciation of exotic words.

Some modern Russian dictionaries use grave accent to denote the secondary stress in compound words (with acute accent for the main stress), like жѝзнеспосо́бный [ˌʐɨzʲ.nʲɪ.spʌ.ˈsob.nɨj] ‘viable’ (from жизнь [ˈʐɨzʲnʲ] ‘life’ and способный [spʌ.ˈsob.nɨj] ‘capable’).

“Decimal” I with grave (‹Ì›) in Cyrillic

Cyrillic orthographies that have letter ‹І› (so-called “decimal I” or “Ukrainian I”) can use ‹Ì›, ‹ì› (or ‹Í›, ‹í›) as its stressed variants (in modern Ukrainian and Belorussian as well as in old Russian or Serbian orthographies; also in Church Slavonic). The difference between ‹ì› and ‹í› is the same as one between ‹ѝ› and ‹и́›.

See also

• Latin I with grave (‹Ì›, ‹ì›)—a variant of ‹I› used in Italian, Scottish Gaelic and Vietnamese language.