Э э (Э э; italics: Э э; also known as backwards ye, from Russian Russian: е оборо́тное, ye oborótnoye, pronounced as /ru/) is a letter found in three Slavic languages: Russian, Belarusian, and West Polesian. It represents the vowels pronounced as /e/ and pronounced as /ɛ/, as the e in the word "editor". In other Slavic languages that use the Cyrillic script, the sounds are represented by Ye (Е е), which represents in Russian and Belarusian pronounced as /je/ in initial and postvocalic position or pronounced as /e/ and palatalizes the preceding consonant. This letter closely resembles and should not be confused with the older Cyrillic letter Ukrainian Ye (Є є), of which Э is a reversed version.
In Cyrillic Moldovan, which was used in the Moldovan SSR during the Soviet Union and is still used in Transnistria, the letter corresponds to ă in the Latin Romanian alphabet, and the phoneme [ə]. It is also used in the Cyrillic alphabets used by Mongolian and many Uralic, Caucasian and Turkic languages of the former Soviet Union.
The letter originated in the thirteenth century as a variant of, at first, according to Đorđić[1] in superscripted line-final position, but by the end of the century elsewhere as well.[2] In the following centuries it continued to appear sporadically as an uncommon variant of, but not later than in the fifteenth century amongst the Eastern Slavs it began to be used to indicate initial (uniotated) pronounced as /e/. According to Yefim Karskiy, "Western Russian ustav knows, e.g. in Miscellany of the 15th c. from the Public Library (manuscr. #391) (etc.), chronicles of 15th-16th cc., Miscellany of Poznań (16th c.),[3] Statut of 1588... It is difficult to say whether it has been developed here independently or it came from South Slavic manuscripts, where occurs as early as in 13-14th cc."[4] Although the revision of Meletius Smotrytsky’s grammar published in Moscow in 1648 does not include in its alphabet, it does consistently write (Etymologia), in contrast to in the first edition of 1619. It was by no means confined to this function in the period, however, as the prevalent spellings (beside) for modern Russian Russian: реестр, Russian: майор demonstrate.
In the specimens of the civil script presented to Peter I in 1708, forms of were included among forms of, but the latter was deleted by Peter. The former was used in some early 18th-century Russian texts, but some authorities of the period considered it superfluous, like Mikhail Lomonosov, on the grounds that "the letter Е, having several different pronunciations, could serve in the pronoun Russian: етотъ and the interjection Russian: ей"[5] and that it was inappropriate to introduce letters solely for use in loanwords. However, the inclusion of in its modern function, in the Russian Academy's Dictionary of 1789–94, marks the point from which it can be considered as an established part of the Russian orthographical standard.
There were still some objections to the letter even as late as 1817, when M. T. Kačenovskij was questioning whether "yet another hard э" was necessary when the language already had "a soft ѣ and a hard е".[6]
In contemporary Russian, is used to represent pronounced as /e/, pronounced as /ɛ/ in initial position (Russian: '''э'''лектричество 'electricity') and postvocalic position (Russian: ду'''э'''ль 'duel'). Among such words are only a few native Russian roots: Russian: эт- (это 'this is', этот/эта/это 'this (m./f./n.)', эти 'these', поэтому 'thus' etc.), Russian: эк- (экий 'what a'), Russian: эдак-/Russian: этак- (эдак/этак 'that way', эдакий/этакий 'sort of') and a few interjections like Russian: эй 'hey', Russian: э 'uh, oh', Russian: э-э-э 'uh'.
Even though Russian contains a significant number of loanwords in which pronounced as /e/ occurs after a hard (unpalatalised) consonant, it is still the practice to use the letter for pronounced as /e/, pronounced as /ɛ/: Russian: теннис, сепсис (tennis, sepsis). There are few traditional exceptions to that practice among common noun loanwords:
In proper nouns, however, may occur after consonants: Russian: Улан-Удэ 'Ulan-Ude' and Russian: Блэр 'Blair'. However, many such loanwords are spelled with : Russian: Блерио 'Blériot' (a French aviator). That is the case especially for names that entered the language centuries ago like: Russian: Берлин, 'Berlin'. The use of is much more frequent for names from non-European languages: Russian: Мао Цзэдун 'Mao Zedong'.
The letter is also used in Russian to render initial œ in foreign words: thus French: Eure (the river in France) is written Russian: Эр. After consonants this is transcribed as . In the 19th century, some writers used for that sound in both positions,[7] but that was never accepted as standard orthography. (The letter was re-invented in the 20th century for Kildin Sami.) It is also used to represent a stressed pronounced as /æ/ in languages such as English, which can cause a problem of conflating pronounced as /æ/ with English pronounced as /ɛ/ (for example, "Addison" and "Edison" would be spelled the same). However, in other positions, Russian also uses for pronounced as /æ/ and for pronounced as /ɛ/.
Unlike Russian, Belarusian has many native words in which it occurs after a hard consonant. Moreover, its orthography was standardized later than that of Russian (which reached its present form at the beginning of the 20th century), on the basis of the spoken language rather than historical tradition. Consequently, and are written in accordance with pronunciation: for initial pronounced as /e/ and after hard consonants, for initial and postvocalic pronounced as /je/ and after soft consonants. That also means that is much more frequent in Belarusian than in Russian.
In Tuvan the Cyrillic letter can be written as a double vowel.[8] [9]
In the Tajik language, the letters е and э have the same function, except that э is used at the beginning of a word (ex. Эрон, "Iran").[10]
In Mongolian, э is the standard letter to represent the /ɛ/ phoneme. It is often written doubled to represent the /eː/ phoneme. Е, however, is only used in the few Mongolian words containing it, Russian loanwords and Russian-style transcriptions of foreign names.