ASCII Character Э

Э э (Э э; italics: Э э; also known as backwards ye, from Russian е оборо́тное, ye oborótnoye, [ˈjɛ ɐbɐˈrotnəjə]) is a letter found in three Slavic languages: Russian, Belarusian, and West Polesian. It represents the vowels [e] and [ɛ], as the e in the word "editor". In other Slavic languages that use the Cyrillic script, the sounds are represented by Ye (Е е), which represents in Russian and Belarusian [je] in initial and postvocalic position or [e] and palatalizes the preceding consonant. This letter closely resembles and should not be confused with the older Cyrillic letter Ukrainian Ye (Є є), of which Э is a reversed version.