Ef (Cyrillic)

Template:Short description Template:Hatnote group Template:Infobox grapheme

Ef or Fe (Ф ф; italics: Ф ф) is a Cyrillic letter, commonly representing the voiceless labiodental fricative {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, like the pronunciation of Template:Angbr in fill, flee or fall. The Cyrillic letter Ef is romanized as Template:Angbr.

HistoryEdit

File:Karion Istomin's alphabet F.jpg

Ef, from Karion Istomin's 1694 alphabet book

The Cyrillic letter Ef was derived from the Greek letter Phi (Φ φ). It merged with and eliminated the letter Fita (Ѳ) in the Russian alphabet in 1918.

The name of Ef in the Early Cyrillic alphabet is {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Template:Translit or Template:Translit), in later Church Slavonic and Russian form it became {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Template:Translit).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In the Cyrillic numeral system, Ef has a value of 500.

Appearance and usage in Slavic languagesEdit

The Slavic languages have almost no native words containing {{#invoke:IPA|main}}. This sound did not exist in Proto-Indo-European (PIE). It arose in Greek and Latin from PIE {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (which yielded Slavic {{#invoke:IPA|main}}). In some instances in Latin, it represented historical th-fronting and derived from Proto-Indo-European {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}. In the Germanic languages, the f sound arose from PIE {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} via Grimm's law, which remained unchanged in Slavic. The letter ф is thus almost exclusively found in words of foreign origin, especially Greek (from φ and sometimes from θ), Latin, French, German, Dutch, English, and Turkic languages

Example borrowings in Russian:

from Greek: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "catastrophe" (from φ); {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "Theodore" (from θ; cf. Bulgarian {{#invoke:Lang|lang}})
from Latin: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "federation"; {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "effect"
from German: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "potato" (from Kartoffel); {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "pound" (from Pfund)
from Dutch: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "flag"
from English: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "office"
from French: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "France"

The few native Slavic words with this letter (in different languages) are examples of onomatopoeia (like Russian verbs {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} etc.) or reflect sporadic pronunciation shifts:

from пв {{#invoke:IPA|main}}: Serbian {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} 'to hope' (cf. Church Slavonic {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} 'to hope')
from хв {{#invoke:IPA|main}}: Macedonian {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} '(he) understands' (cf. Church Slavonic {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} 'to take, to catch'), Russian {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} 'bustard' (cf. Ukrainian {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} 'bustard')
from кв {{#invoke:IPA|main}}: Russian {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} 'eagle-owl' (cf. Ukrainian {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} 'to cry')
from х {{#invoke:IPA|main}}: Russian toponym {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} 'Fili' (from {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} 'sickly')

Slavic languagesEdit

Ef is the 21st letter of the Bulgarian alphabet; the 22nd letter of the Russian alphabet; the 23rd letter of the Belarusian alphabet; the 25th letter of the Serbian and Ukrainian alphabet; and the 26th letter of the Macedonian alphabet. It represents the consonant {{#invoke:IPA|main}} unless it is before a palatalizing vowel, when it represents {{#invoke:IPA|main}}.

Related letters and other similar charactersEdit

Computing codesEdit

Template:Charmap

Cultural referencesEdit

The phraseologism "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}", "to stand as Template:Translit" means "to stand with arms akimbo".

ReferencesEdit

Template:Reflist

External linksEdit

Template:Cyrillic navbox