Usage
Since the 1930s, ⟨и⟩ has been the tenth letter of the Russian alphabet, and in Russian it represents /i/, like the i in machine, except after some consonants (see below). In Russian ⟨и⟩ typically denotes a preceding soft consonant and therefore is considered the soft counterpart to ⟨ы⟩ (which represents ) but, unlike other "soft" vowels (⟨е⟩, ⟨ё⟩, ⟨ю⟩, and ⟨я⟩), ⟨и⟩ in isolation is not preceded by the /j/ semivowel. ⟨И⟩ pronounced as in ⟨жи⟩ (sounds like ⟨жы⟩ ), ⟨ши⟩ (sounds like ⟨шы⟩ ) and ⟨ци⟩ (sounds like ⟨цы⟩ ), because in Russian the sound after consonants “zh” ⟨ж⟩, “sh” ⟨ш⟩ and “ts” ⟨ц⟩ is inarticulable.
In Ukrainian and Belarusian, the sound /i/ is represented by another letter ⟨і⟩, sometimes called Ukrainian I, removed from the modern Russian alphabet. Ukrainian and Belarusian ⟨і⟩ sounds like Russian ⟨и⟩, but a clearly distinct sound is represented by ⟨и⟩ in Ukrainian, which only slightly differs from Russian ⟨ы⟩ and perceived as ⟨ы⟩ by a Russian speaker.
The letter ⟨и⟩ is the eleventh letter of the Ukrainian alphabet.
In the Cyrillic Serbian alphabet ⟨и⟩ is the tenth letter of the alphabet and in Serbian it represents /i/, like the i in machine or i in bill. In the Latin Serbian alphabet the same vowel is represented by "I/i".
In Macedonian it is the eleventh letter of the alphabet and it represents the sound /i/.
It is transliterated from Russian as ⟨i⟩, or from Ukrainian as ⟨y⟩ or ⟨i⟩, depending on romanization systems. See romanization of Russian and romanization of Ukrainian.
Read more about this topic: I (Cyrillic)
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