History
The Cyrillic letter I was derived from the Greek letter Eta (Η η). This is why the earliest (up to the 13th century) shape of Cyrillic ⟨И⟩ was ⟨H⟩.
The name of the Cyrillic letter I in the Early Cyrillic alphabet was ижє (iže), meaning "which".
In the Cyrillic numeral system, the Cyrillic letter I had a value of 8.
In the Early Cyrillic alphabet there was little or no distinction between the letter ⟨И⟩ and the letter ⟨І⟩ which was derived from the Greek letter Iota (Ι ι). They both remained in the alphabetical repertoire because they represented different numbers in the Cyrillic numeral system, eight and ten, and are therefore sometimes referred to as octal I and decimal I. Today they co-exist in Church Slavonic (with no pronunciation difference) and in Ukrainian (representing actual pronunciation differences). Other modern orthographies for Slavic languages eliminated one of the two letters during alphabet reforms of the 19th or 20th centuries: Russian, Macedonian, Serbian and Bulgarian languages use only ⟨И⟩, whereas Belarusian uses only ⟨І⟩.
Read more about this topic: I (Cyrillic)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won’t do. It’s an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought.”
—Peter B. Medawar (1915–1987)
“What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)