Be (Cyrillic)

Not to be confused withϭ,Ꮾ,6,δ/𝛿,orƂ.

"B (Cyrillic)" redirects here. For the Cyrillic character В, seeVe (Cyrillic).

Be(Б б or Ƃ, δ; italics:Б б or Ƃ, δ) is a letter of theCyrillic script.It commonly represents thevoiced bilabial plosive/b/,like the English pronunciation of⟨b⟩in "ball ". It should not be confused with theCyrillic letter Ve(В в), which is shaped like Latin capital letter B but represents thevoiced labiodental fricative/v/or thevoiced bilabial fricative/β/.The Cyrillic letter Б (Be) is romanized using the Latin letterB.

Б (Buky/бѹкꙑ)
Б б
(See below)
Usage
Writing system	Cyrillic script
Type	Alphabetic
Language of origin	Old Church Slavonic
Sound values	[b] [p] [β]
InUnicode	U+0411, U+0431
Alphabetical position	2
History
Development	Β β Б б
Time period	~900 to present
Sisters	B B β В в Ƃ ƃ
Transliterations	B(Latin script)
Variations	(See below)
Other
Writing direction	Left-to-right

Be,from theAlphabet Book оf the Red Army soldier(1921)

History

The Cyrillic letters Be andVe(В в) were both derived from the Greek letterBeta(Β β).

In theEarly Cyrillic Alpha betthe name of the letter Be wasбѹкы(buky/буки), meaning "letter".

In theCyrillic 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 letterб(be) is similar (but not identical) in shape to thedigit 6.Its lowercase form also somewhat resembles a lowercase letterB( "b" ), the letter to which it corresponds in the Latin Alpha bet. After all, the lowercase letterB( "b" ) developed from scribal alterations to the capital letterB( "B" ), just as б did from scribal alterations to the capital letterВ( "Ve" ).

Printed forms (the font used isCambria)

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

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

Usage

InRussianandBulgarian,the letter Be generally represents thevoiced bilabial plosive/b/,but word-finally or before a voicelessconsonant,it also represents the voiceless[p].Before apalatalizingvowel, it represents/bʲ/.InMacedonian,the letter represents the sound/b/,but if it is in the final position of the word, it is pronounced as/p/,like inлеб/lɛp/('bread').

InMari,it may represent either /b/ or thevoiced 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	dec	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	Б		б
KOI8-RandKOI8-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

• The dictionary definition ofБat Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition ofбat Wiktionary