Be (Cyrillic)

Not to be confused with ϭ, , 6 (number), or Ƃ.
Cyrillic letter Be
The Cyrillic script
Slavic letters
АБВГҐДЂ
ЃЕЀЁЄЖЗ
З́ЅИЍІЇЙ
ЈКЛЉМНЊ
ОПРСС́ТЋ
ЌУЎФХЦЧ
ЏШЩЪЫЬЭ
ЮЯ
Non-Slavic letters
ӐА̄А̊А̃ӒӒ̄Ә
Ә́Ә̃ӚӔҒГ̧Г̑
Г̄ҔӺӶԀԂ
ԪԬӖЕ̄Е̃
Ё̄Є̈ӁҖӜԄ
ҘӞԐԐ̈ӠԆӢ
И̃ҊӤҚӃҠҞ
ҜԞԚӅԮԒԠ
ԈԔӍӉҢԨӇ
ҤԢԊО̆О̃О̄Ӧ
ӨӨ̄ӪҨԤҦР̌
ҎԖҪԌҬ
ԎУ̃ӮӰӰ́Ӳ
ҮҮ́ҰХ̑ҲӼӾ
ҺҺ̈ԦҴҶ
ӴӋҸҼ
ҾЫ̆Ы̄ӸҌЭ̆Э̄
Э̇ӬӬ́Ӭ̄Ю̆Ю̈Ю̈́
Ю̄Я̆Я̄Я̈ԘԜӀ
Archaic letters
ҀѺ
ОУѠѼѾ
ѢѤѦ
ѪѨѬѮ
ѰѲѴѶ

Be б б italics: Б б б) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It commonly represents the voiced bilabial plosive /b/, like the English pronunciation of b in "bee". It should not be confused with the Cyrillic letter Ve в), which is shaped like Latin capital letter B but represents the voiced labiodental fricative /v/.

The Cyrillic letter Б (Be) is romanized using the Latin letter B.

History

Both the Cyrillic letters Be and Ve в) were derived from the Greek letter Beta β).

In the Early Cyrillic alphabet the name of the letter Be was бѹкы (buky/буки), meaning "letter".

In the Cyrillic numeral system, the letter Be had no numeric value because the letter Ve inherited the Greek letter Beta's numeric value.

Form

Printed forms

The Russian small letter б (be) is similar (but not identical) in shape to the digit 6. In the Serbian and Macedonian alphabets, the lowercase letter б has a different form used in printing, as is shown in the illustration to the side, which shows both the standard and variant forms. Its lowercase from also somewhat resembles a lowercase letter B ("b"), the letter to which it corresponds in the Latin alphabet. After all, lowercase letter B ("b") developed from scribal alterations to the capital letter B ("B"), just as б did from scribal alterations to the capital letter В.

On the World Wide Web, <span lang="sr">б</span> and <span lang="ru">б</span> must give different results. Since Unicode does not provide the required difference, OpenType locl (locale) support must be present. Programs like Mozilla Firefox, LibreOffice (currently under Linux only), as well as a few others, provide the required OpenType support. Starting from CSS 3, web authors also have to use this: font-feature-settings: 'locl';. Of course, font families like GNU FreeFont, DejaVu, Ubuntu, Microsoft "C*" fonts from Windows Vista and above must be used.

Russian Cursive forms (design of capital letter on this image also differs from Serbian and Macedonian style).

The cursive form of the lowercase letter Be resembles the lowercase Greek letter Delta (δ), but they are slightly different in their upper portions.

Б (Cyrillic).ogg
Pronunciation of name of Cyrillic 'Б'

Problems playing this file? See media help.

Usage

In Russian and Bulgarian, the letter Be generally represents the voiced bilabial plosive /b/, but word-finally or before a voiceless consonant, it also represents the voiceless [p]. Before a palatalizing vowel, it represents /bʲ/. In Macedonian, the letter represents the sound /b/, but it is in the final position of the word, it is pronounced as /p/, like in леб /lɛp/ ('bread').

In Mari, it may represent either /b/ or the voiced bilabial fricative /β/.

Related letters and other similar characters

Computing codes

Character Б б
Unicode name CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BE CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BE
Encodings decimal hex decimal hex
Unicode 1041 U+0411 1073 U+0431
UTF-8 208 145 D0 91 208 177 D0 B1
Numeric character reference &#1041; &#x411; &#1073; &#x431;
KOI8-R and KOI8-U 226 E2 194 C2
CP 855 163 A3 162 A2
Windows-1251 193 C1 225 E1
ISO-8859-5 177 B1 209 D1
Mac Cyrillic 129 81 225 E1

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/2/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.