Be (Cyrillic)

Cyrillic letter Be
Phonetic usage:	[b]
The Cyrillic script
Slavic letters
Non-Slavic letters
Archaic letters
	List of Cyrillic letters; Cyrillic digraphs;

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 "ball". It should not be confused with the Cyrillic letter Ve (В 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 в) were derived from the Greek letter Beta (Β 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

The Russian small letter б (be) is similar (but not identical) in shape to the digit 6. Its lowercase form also somewhat resembles a lowercase letter B ("b"), the letter to which it corresponds in the Latin alphabet. After all, the 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.

Printed forms (the font used is Cambria)

In Serbian and Macedonian the italic form is allowed to vary, but the regular should look like in other languages.[1]

Russian cursive forms (design of capital letter on this image 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.

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 if 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/.

In Serbian, the letter represents the voiced bilabial plosive /b/, regardless of the position in the word.

Related letters and other similar characters

Β β : Greek letter Beta
В в : Cyrillic letter Ve
B b : Latin letter B
Ƃ ƃ : Latin letter Ƃ

Computing codes

Character information
Preview	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	Б	Б	б	б
Named character reference	&Bcy;		&bcy;
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

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References

Peshikan, Mitar; Jerković, Jovan; Pižurica, Mato (1994). Pravopis srpskoga jezika. Matica Srpska. p. 42.

External links

The dictionary definition of Б at Wiktionary
The dictionary definition of б at Wiktionary

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[1] Peshikan, Mitar; Jerković, Jovan; Pižurica, Mato (1994). Pravopis srpskoga jezika. Matica Srpska. p. 42.