Be (Cyrillic)

Not to be confused with ϭ, Ꮾ, 6 (number), or Ƃ.

Cyrillic letter Be
The Cyrillic script
Slavic letters
А Б В Г Ґ Д Ђ Ѓ Е Ѐ Ё Є Ж З З́ Ѕ И Ѝ І Ї Й Ј К Л Љ М Н Њ О П Р С С́ Т Ћ Ќ У Ў Ф Х Ц Ч Џ Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я
Non-Slavic letters
Ӑ А̄ А̊ А̃ Ӓ Ӓ̄ Ә Ә́ Ә̃ Ӛ Ӕ Ғ Г̧ Г̑ Г̄ Ҕ Ӻ Ӷ Ԁ Ԃ Ꚃ Ꚁ Ꚉ Ԫ Ԭ Ӗ Е̄ Е̃ Ё̄ Є̈ Ӂ Җ Ꚅ Ӝ Ԅ Ҙ Ӟ Ԑ Ԑ̈ Ӡ Ԇ Ӣ И̃ Ҋ Ӥ Қ Ӄ Ҡ Ҟ Ҝ Ԟ Ԛ Ӆ Ԯ Ԓ Ԡ Ԉ Ԕ Ӎ Ӊ Ң Ԩ Ӈ Ҥ Ԣ Ԋ О̆ О̃ О̄ Ӧ Ө Ө̄ Ӫ Ҩ Ԥ Ҧ Р̌ Ҏ Ԗ Ҫ Ԍ Ꚑ Ҭ Ꚋ Ꚍ Ԏ У̃ Ӯ Ӱ Ӱ́ Ӳ Ү Ү́ Ұ Х̑ Ҳ Ӽ Ӿ Һ Ԧ Ꚕ Ҵ Ꚏ Ҷ Ӵ Ӌ Ҹ Ꚓ Ꚗ Ꚇ Ҽ Ҿ Ы̆ Ы̄ Ӹ Ҍ Э̆ Э̄ Э̇ Ӭ Ӭ́ Ӭ̄ Ю̆ Ю̈ Ю̈́ Ю̄ Я̆ Я̄ Я̈ Ԙ Ԝ Ӏ
Archaic letters
Ꙁ Ꙃ Ꙅ Ꙇ Ꙉ Ҁ Ѻ ОУ Ꙋ Ѡ Ѽ Ꙍ Ѿ Ꙏ Ѣ Ꙑ Ꙓ Ꙕ Ꙗ Ѥ Ѧ Ꙙ Ѫ Ꙛ Ѩ Ꙝ Ѭ Ѯ Ѱ Ѳ Ѵ Ѷ Ꙟ Ꙡ Ꙣ Ꙥ Ꙧ Ꙩ Ꙫ Ꙭ ꙮ Ꚙ Ꚛ
List of Cyrillic letters Cyrillic digraphs

Be (Б 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 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

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 which it corresponds to in the Latin alphabet. This resemblance is far from coincidental, as 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.

In Web technologies, <span lang="sr">б</span> and <span lang="ru">б</span> must give different results. Since Unicode doesn't provide the required difference, OpenType locl (locale) support must be present. Programs like Mozilla Firefox, LibreOffice (currently under GNU/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), though 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], and before a palatalizing vowel it represents /bʲ/. In Macedonian the letter represents the sound /b/, but if the letter is in the final position of the word then it is pronounced as /p/, like in леб /lɛp/ ('bread').

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

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	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
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

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