Cyrillic Small Letter En

It sounds like the n in “no”. In Ukrainian and Russian it can also be soft: said with the middle of the tongue raised toward the roof of the mouth, close to the “ny” in “canyon”. The following letter decides; a soft sign ь after it, as in Ukrainian кінь (horse), makes it soft.

Where did н come from?

It descends from the Greek letter nu, which also stood for n. Cyrillic developed in Bulgaria in the late ninth century, adapting Greek letters for Slavic Christian worship and books. It followed Glagolitic, an older alphabet for Slavic languages. Early Cyrillic forms of this letter looked like N.

Early Cyrillic inscriptions dated 921 survive at a rock monastery near Targovishte in Bulgaria. The script spread to Rus and Serbia, and regional writing traditions began to differ from the 12th century.

Printing later reshaped the letters in Russian books. Peter the Great’s 1708–1710 civil-type reform brought Russian non-religious printing closer to Western type styles. Church Slavonic, the language of Orthodox worship, kept older forms in print.