Yery

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cyrillic letter Yery
Cyrillic alphabet
А	Б	В	Г	Ґ	Ѓ	Д
Ђ	Е	Ё	Є	Ж	З	Ѕ
И	І	Ї	Й	Ј	К	Ќ
Л	Љ	М	Н	Њ	О	П
Р	С	Т	Ћ	У	Ў	Ф
Х	Ц	Ч	Џ	Ш	Щ	Ъ
Ы	Ь	Э	Ю	Я
Non-Slavic Letters
Ӑ	Ә	Ӕ	Ҕ	Ӗ	Ғ	Ӏ
Ӂ	Җ	Ӝ	Ҙ	Ӟ	Ӡ	Ӣ
Ӥ	Ҡ	Қ	Ҟ	Ҝ	Ң	Ҥ
Ө	Ӧ	Ҧ	Ҫ	Ҷ	Ҹ	Ӵ
Ҽ	Ҿ	Ҩ	Ҳ	Һ	Ҭ	Ҵ
Ӳ	Ӯ	Ү	Ұ	Ӱ
Archaic letters
Ҁ	Ѹ	Ѡ	Ѿ	Ѻ	Ѣ	ІА
Ѥ	Ѧ	Ѫ	Ѩ	Ѭ	Ѯ	Ѱ
Ѳ	Ѵ	Ѷ

Yery (Ы, ы) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. It represents the phoneme /i/ after non-palatalized (hard) consonants in the Belarusian and Russian alphabets. Because of phonological processes, the actual realization of /i/ after hard consonants is retracted to a close central unrounded vowel (IPA [ɨ]).

Like many Cyrillic letters, originally the letter yery was formed from a ligature—between Yer ъ and Izhe (then і) or Izhei (then н, now и). In ancient manuscripts, it is almost without exception found as ъі or ън. Once the letters ъ and ь subsequently lost their values as vowels from the Slavonic language, the current form ы evolved.

The letter ы is usually transcribed in English and most other West-European languages as y, e.g. Krylov (Russian last name Крылов). See Romanization of Russian.

The yery is theoretically never capitalized because no words start with it, but Cyrillic type faces do normally provide an uppercase form for setting type in all caps. Furthermore there are several proper and common nouns of non-Russian origin (including some geographical names in Russia) with a beginning ы, е.g. Ытык-Кюёль (Ytyk-Kyuyol), Ыгыатта (Ygyatta), a village and a river in Sakha (Yakutia) Republic respectively, Ыльчи Мундок (Eulji Mundeok), a Korean military leader.

Yery is no longer found in the Ukrainian alphabet, however a similar sound exists, represented by the letter И.