It commonly represents the close front unrounded vowel /i/, like the pronunciation of ⟨i⟩ in English "machine".

The two Carpathian Rusyn standard varieties use і, и and ы for three different sounds: /i/, /ɪ/ and /ɨ/, respectively.

In Komi, і occurs only after the consonants д, з, л, н, с, and т and does not palatalize them, while и does.

[2] The dot came later with some typefaces through Western European influence, which similarly affected other Cyrillic letters such as а and е.

They both remained in the alphabetical repertoire, since they represented different numbers in the Cyrillic numeral system, eight and ten, respectively.

It is the tenth letter in Belarussian, the twelfth in Carpathian Rusyn and Ukrainian, the thirty-eighth in Kazakh and the eleventh in Komi.