Fita (Ѳ ѳ; italics: Ѳ ѳ) is a letter of the Early Cyrillic alphabet. The shape and the name of the letter are derived from the Greek letter theta (Θ θ). In the ISO 9 system, Ѳ is romanized using F grave accent (F̀ f̀).
In the Cyrillic numeral system, Fita has a numerical value of 9.
Shape
In traditional (
Church Slavonic) typefaces, the central line is typically about twice the width of the letter's body and has serifs similar to those on the letter Т: . Sometimes the line is drawn as low as the baseline, which makes the letter difficult to distinguish from Д.
Usage
Old Russian and Church Slavonic
The traditional Russian name of the letter is фита́
fitá (or, in pre-1918 spelling, ѳита́). Fita was mainly used to write proper names and loanwords derived from or via Greek.
Russians pronounced these names with the sound instead of (like the pronunciation of in "
thin"), for example "Theodore" was pronounced as "Feodor" (now "Fyodor").
Early texts in Russian language (and in the Russian recension of Church Slavonic) demonstrate an increasing interchangeability of Ѳ and Ф. Some scribes preferred one of the two letters and ignored the other. There existed an orthographical system to write Ѳ in an initial position and Ф elsewhere. Since the middle of the 17th century, selection between Ѳ and Ф was re-adjusted to exactly follow the Greek origin, the system still in use in Church Slavonic orthography.
Russian
In the first variant of the Petrine Russian alphabet (1707–1708), the letter
fita was eliminated and
fe (Ф) became the only way to represent . But in the 19th century, the letter
fita was restored and both letters co-existed until the 1918 spelling reform, when
fita was replaced by
fe again.
Many Greek words with theta were adopted in Russian with te (Т т) instead of fita (mostly through Latin or other Western European languages): теорема (theorem), атлетъ (athlete), пантера (panther), фталевый (phthalic), etc. Sometimes dual spellings/pronunciations existed: ѳеатръ/театръ (theatre), аѳеизмъ/атеизмъ (atheism), алгориѳмъ/алгоритмъ (algorithm), каѳолическій/католическій (Catholic), etc.; the variants with fita (in modern spelling with Ф) are typically more archaic or special.
Other languages
In other languages which use the Cyrillic alphabet,
fita was pronounced and was replaced with
te (Т т). For example, the Bulgarian, Macedonian and Serbian version of Theodore is Тодор
Todor or Теодор
Teodor.
Romanian
Called
thita, is part of the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet, which was used until about 1860.
Aleut
Fita was used in the first Cyrillic version of the
Aleut language alphabet, typically in loanwords.
Related letters and other similar characters
Computing codes
See also
-
Th-fronting, pronunciation of English "th" as "f" or "v".
-
Ҫ ҫ : Cyrillic letter the, which is pronounced in Bashkir language as a voiceless dental fricative ()
-
Т̌ т̌ : Cyrillic letter te with caron, pronounced in Wakhi language Cyrillic as a voiceless dental fricative ()
External links
