И, the letter i

History

И is the letter I, used in almost all modern Cyrillic alphabets, the exception being Belarusian, where І stands in its place. It commonly represents the close front unrounded vowel /i/, as in Russian and Bulgarian, the sound of the letter i in the English word machine. In Ukrainian it represents the near-close near-front unrounded vowel /ɪ/, the sound of i in bin.

Several lowercase cursive letters consist, entirely or in part, of one element that is identical to the dotless Latin cursive ı, to the cursive Greek ι, or to half of a cursive u: и, л, м, ш, щ and ы. Combinations of them cannot be deciphered unambiguously without knowing the language or without broader context. In волшебник, meaning magician, and домик, meaning little house, the pairs лш and ми are written identically. The word лишишь, meaning you will deprive, consists almost exclusively of these elements, and мщу, meaning I avenge, and лицу, the dative of лицо meaning face, become absolutely identical in their cursive form. Ш, Щ, И, Л and М are named together as letters whose similarity in cursive can pose a challenge.

Russian cursive was developed during the 18th century on the base of the earlier Cyrillic tachygraphic writing known as skoropis, meaning rapid or running script, which was in turn the chancery hand of the 14th to 17th centuries, descended from the earlier Cyrillic bookhands called ustav and poluustav. It became the handwritten counterpart of the civil, or Petrine, printed script of books.

The reform carried out after 1917 made и the only letter for its sound in Russian: і and ѵ were conflated with и, removing a trio of homophonous graphemes, И, І and Ѵ, from the alphabet. Distinctions that spelling had carried went with them, so that миръ and мiръ, peace and world, both became мир. Critics held that choosing Ии as the single letter for the sound, and removing Іі, worked against the aim of simplification, since Ии occupies more space and is sometimes indistinguishable from Шш.