Ye (Cyrillic)

Russian and Belarusian

• At the beginning of a word or after a vowel, Ye represents the phonemic combination /je/ (phonetically [je] or [jɛ]), like the pronunciation of ⟨ye⟩ in "yes". Ukrainian uses the letter ⟨є⟩ (see Ukrainian Ye) in this way.
• Following a consonant, Ye indicates that the consonant is palatalized, and represents the vowel /e/ (phonetically [e] or [ɛ]), like the pronunciation of ⟨e⟩ in "yes".

In Russian, the letter ⟨е⟩ can follow unpalatalized consonants, especially ⟨ж⟩, ⟨ш⟩, and ⟨ц⟩. In some loanwords, other consonants before ⟨е⟩ (especially ⟨т⟩, ⟨д⟩, ⟨н⟩, ⟨с⟩, ⟨з⟩, and ⟨р⟩) are also not palatalized, see E (Cyrillic). The letter ⟨е⟩ also represents /jo/ (as in "yogurt") and /o/ after palatalized consonants, ⟨ж⟩, and ⟨ш⟩. In these cases, ⟨ё⟩ may be used, see Yo (Cyrillic). In unstressed syllables, ⟨e⟩ represents reduced vowels like [ɪ], see Russian phonology and Vowel reduction in Russian.

Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian, Ukrainian and Rusyn

This letter is called E, and represents the vowel phoneme /e/ (phonetically [e] or [ɛ]), like the pronunciation of ⟨e⟩ in the word "set".

Mongolian

The letter represents the sound /jo/ at the beginning of words (yo represents /jɔ/), and also represents /je/ at the beginning of some words and in the middle or end of words and /e/ in Russian loanwords and transcriptions of foreign names.

Turkic languages and Tajik

In Turkic languages utilizing the Cyrillic script (such as Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Uzbek) and in Tajik, Ye is used to represent the phoneme e~ɛ, both word-finally and medially. Isolated, word-initially, or vowel-succeeding, this letter is substituted with the letter Э. If the letter Ye occurs word-initially, isolated, or vowel-succeeding, it represents the phoneme /je/~/jɛ/. 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.