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И, и (I) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet, pronounced [i] in Russian, or [ɪ] in Ukrainian. It looks like a backwards version of the Latin alphabet's N and it is derived from the Greek capital letter eta (Η, pronounced [ɛː] in Ancient Greek but [i] in Modern Greek), which looks like (and is the source of) Latin H.
It is the tenth letter of the Russian alphabet, and in Russian is pronounced [i], like the "i" in the English word machine. Although not palatized or iotated like Russian's other "soft" vowels (Е, Ё, Ю, and Я), it is considered the soft counterpart to Ы, pronounced [ɨ], (SAMPA /1/). (In Ukrainian and Belarussian, the sound [i] is represented by the letter І, derived from Greek iota, and sometimes called Ukrainian I.)
It is the 11th letter of the Ukrainian alphabet, and in Ukrainian is pronounced [ɪ] (SAMPA /I/), as in English image.
Belarusian has dispensed entirely with the letter И.
It is transliterated from Russian as i, or from Ukrainian as y or i, using different romanization systems. See Transliteration of Russian into English and Romanization of Ukrainian.
With a diacritic, it forms the letter Й, called I kratkoye (short I) in Russian or Yot in Ukrainian.
Cyrillic flavour in typography
Like the Cyrillic letter ya, it is commonly used by those who want to give a Slavic feel to English text by replacing English letters with Cyrillic letters vaguely resembling them. Ya is frequently used in place of English R, while I is used to represent N (e.g. ЯUSSIAИ, which is totally illegible in any Slavic language).
(Russian letters bolded; old letters italics)
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