E (àõ; italics: àõ or <span style="font-family: times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: larger">àõ</span>; italics: <span style="font-family: times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: larger">àõ</span>), known in Russian and Belarusian as Ye, Je, or Ie, is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In some languages this letter is called E. It commonly represents the vowel or , like the pronunciation of in "yes". It was derived from the Greek letter epsilon (àõ), and the shape is very similar to the Latin letter E or another version of E (Cyrillic).
Ye is romanized using the Latin letter E for Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian, Ukrainian and Rusyn, and occasionally Russian (ÃÂ÷õÃÂþ ÃÂðùúðû, Ozero Baykal), Je for Belarusian (ÃÂðÃÂûðÃÂõ, Zaslaà Âje), Ye for Russian (ÃÂòÃÂþÿð, Yevropa), and Ie occasionally for Russian (ÃÂýõÿÃÂ, Dniepr) and Belarusian (ÃÂðûðô÷õÃÂÃÂýð, MaladzieÃÂna).
In Russian, the letter can follow unpalatalized consonants, especially , , and . In some loanwords, other consonants before (especially , , , , , and ) are also not palatalized, see E (Cyrillic). The letter also represents (as in "yogurt") and after palatalized consonants, , and . In these cases, may be used, see Yo (Cyrillic). In unstressed syllables, represents reduced vowels like , see Russian phonology and Vowel reduction in Russian.
This letter is called E, and represents the vowel phoneme (phonetically or ), like the pronunciation of in the word "set".
The letter represents the sound (ù+é) at the beginning of words (yo represents ) like õà(nine) and õÃÂéýàøùûéóà(president), and also represents at the beginning of some words and in the middle or end of words and in Russian loanwords and transcriptions of foreign names. Finally, it represents in the volitional forms of certain verbs like àïÃÂóÃÂõ and ÃÂÃÂóÃÂõ, etc.
In Turkic languages utilizing the Cyrillic script (such as Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Uzbek) and in Tajik, Ye is used to represent the phoneme ~, both word-finally and medially. Isolated, word-initially, or vowel-succeeding, this letter is substituted with the letter ÃÂ. If the letter Ye occurs word-initially, isolated, or vowel-succeeding, it represents the phoneme /je/~/jÃÂ/. This is done in imitation of the Russian usage, as many of these languages received Cyrillic orthographies as part of Russification in the Soviet Union.