Yus

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cyrillic letter Yus

Cyrillic alphabet
А	Б	В	Г	Ґ	Ѓ	Д
Ђ	Е	Ѐ	Ё	Є	Ж	З
Ѕ	И	Ѝ	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	Ӓ	Ә	Ӛ	Ӕ	Ҕ	Ӗ
Ғ	Ӷ	Ӏ	Ӂ	Җ	Ӝ	Ҙ
Ӟ	Ӡ	Ӣ	Ӥ	Ҋ	Ҡ	Қ
Ҟ	Ҝ	Ӄ	Ӆ	Ӎ	Ң	Ҥ
Ӊ	Ӈ	Ө	Ӫ	Ӧ	Ҧ	Ҏ
Ҫ	Ҷ	Ҹ	Ӵ	Ҽ	Ҿ	Ӌ
Ҩ	Ҳ	Һ	Ҭ	Ҵ	Ӳ	Ӯ
Ү	Ұ	Ӱ	Ӹ	Ҍ	Ӭ
Archaic letters
Ҁ	Ѹ	Ѡ	Ѿ	Ѻ	Ѣ	ІА
Ѥ	Ѧ	Ѫ	Ѩ	Ѭ	Ѯ	Ѱ
Ѳ	Ѵ	Ѷ

Little Yus (Ѧ, ѧ) and Big Yus (Ѫ, ѫ), or Jus, are the letters representing two Common Slavonic nasal vowels, in the early Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets. Each can occur in iotified form (Ѩ, ѩ, Ѭ, ѭ), as a ligature with the letter I.

Cyrillic Little Yus (left) and Big Yus (right); normal forms (above) and iotified (below)

Phonetically, Little Yus represents a nasalized front vowel, possibly IPA [ɛ̃], while Big Yus represents a nasalized back vowel, such as IPA [ɔ̃].

Names of the letters do not imply capitalization: both Little and Big Yus exist in majuscule and minuscule variants.

All modern Slavic languages which use the Cyrillic alphabet have lost the nasal vowels, making Yus unnecessary.

Big Yus was a part of the Bulgarian alphabet until 1945. However, the back nasal had disappeared from the language by that point. As a result, there were inconsistencies in its usage since people had to rely on memorized orthographic conventions to put it in its etymologically correct place. There are some Bulgarian or Macedonian dialects around Thessaloniki and Kastoria in Northern Greece which still keep nasal pronunciation: КъНде греНдеш, мило чеНдо?

In Russia, Little Yus was adapted to represent the iotated /ja/ я in the middle or end of a word; the modern letter Ya я is an adaptation of its cursive form of the seventeenth century, enshrined by the typographical reform of 1708. (This is also why я in Russian often appears as ę in Polish; cf. Russian пять, "five"; Polish pięć.)

In Polish, which is a Slavic language but uses the Latin alphabet, the letter Ę, ę has the phonetic value of Little Yus, while Ą, ą has that of Big Yus. The ioticized forms, meanwhile, are written ię, ią in Polish. Curiously, the phonemes written ę and ą are not historically descended from those represented by Little and Big Yus, but developed after the original nasals merged in Polish.