Yer

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Cyrillic letter Yer
Unicode (hex)
majuscule: U+042A
minuscule: U+044A
Cyrillic alphabet
А	Б	В	Г	Ґ	Д	Ѓ
Ђ	Е	Ѐ	Ё	Є	Ж	З
Ѕ	И	Ѝ	І	Ї	Й	Ј
К	Л	Љ	М	Н	Њ	О
П	Р	С	Т	Ћ	Ќ	У
Ў	Ф	Х	Ц	Ч	Џ	Ш
Щ	Ъ	Ы	Ь	Э	Ю	Я
Non-Slavic letters
Ӑ	Ӓ	Ә	Ӛ	Ӕ	Ғ	Ӷ
Ҕ	Ӗ	Ҽ	Ҿ	Ӂ	Җ	Ӝ
Ҙ	Ӟ	Ӡ	Ӥ	Ӣ	Ӏ	Ҋ
Қ	Ҟ	Ҡ	Ӄ	Ҝ	Ӆ	Ӎ
Ҥ	Ң	Ӊ	Ӈ	Ӧ	Ө	Ӫ
Ҩ	Ҧ	Ҏ	Ҫ	Ҭ	Ӳ	Ӱ
Ӯ	Ү	Ұ	Ҳ	Һ	Ҵ	Ӵ
Ҷ	Ӌ	Ҹ	Ӹ	Ҍ	Ӭ
Archaic letters
Ҁ	Ѹ	Ѡ	Ѿ	Ѻ	Ѣ	ІА
Ѥ	Ѧ	Ѫ	Ѩ	Ѭ	Ѯ	Ѱ
Ѳ	Ѵ	Ѷ	Ꙟ
List of Cyrillic letters

The letter (Ъ, ъ) of the Cyrillic alphabet is known as the hard sign (твёрдый знак [ˈtvʲor.dɨj znak]) in the modern Rusyn and Russian alphabets and as er golyam (ер голям, "big yer") in the Bulgarian alphabet. The letter is called back yer (ер обратный) in the pre-reform Russian orthography, in Old Russian, and in Old Church Slavonic. Originally the yer denoted an ultra-short or reduced middle rounded vowel. Its companion is the front yer, now known as the soft sign in Russian and as er malək in Bulgaria (Ь, ь), which was originally also a reduced vowel, more frontal than the ъ, and which is today used to mark the palatalization of consonants in all of the Slavic languages written in the Cyrillic alphabet, except for Serbian and Macedonian, where it is not used although its traces can be seen in the letters њ and љ. The two reduced vowels are together called the yers in Slavic philology.

Contents 1 Original use 2 Russian language 2.1 Old Russian: Yer 2.2 Modern Russian: Hard sign 2.3 Old Russian: Hard sign 3 Bulgarian language 4 Belarusian language 5 Ukrainian language

[edit] Original use

In the Old Church Slavonic language, the yer was a vowel letter, indicating the so-called "reduced vowel": ъ = [ŭ], ь = [ĭ] in the conventional transcription. These vowels stemmed from the Indo-European short /u/ and /i/ (compare Latin angulus and Old Church Slavonic ѫгълъ /ɔ̃gŭlŭ/). In all West Slavic languages the yer either disappeared or was transformed into /e/, according to Havlík's law.

[edit] Russian language

[edit] Old Russian: Yer

In Old and Middle Russian, the yers were dropped entirely in "weak" positions, and were replaced by non-reduced vowels in "strong" positions. Modern Russian inflection is therefore at times complicated by the so-called "transitive" (lit. беглые [ˈbʲe.glɨjə] "fugitive" or "fleeting") vowels, which appear and disappear in place of a former yer. For example:

• OR сънъ /ˈsŭ.nŭ/ → R сон [son] "sleep" (nom. sg.)
• OR съна /sŭˈnа/ → R сна [sna] "sleep" (gen. sg.)
• OR угълъ /ˈu.gŭ.lŭ/ → R угол [ˈu.gəl] "corner" (nom. sg.)
• OR угъла /u.gŭˈla/ → R угла [ʊˈgla] "corner" (gen. sg.)

The basic rule governing the fall of the yers in Russian may be stated as follows:

• Strong yers are fully voiced: ь → е (or ë); ъ → о
• Weak yers drop entirely, except that the palatalization from a following ь generally remains.
• For determining whether a yer is strong or weak, it is necessary to break the continuous flow of speech into individual words, or very common phrases (typically prepositional) which are entirely run together in speech. The rule for determining which yers are weak and which are strong is known as Havlík's law.
• A terminal yer is weak.
• A yer which is followed in the next syllable by a non-reduced vowel is weak.
• The yer in the syllable before one with a weak yer is strong.
• The yer in the syllable before one with a strong yer is weak.

Simply put, in a string of Old Russian syllables each of which has a reduced vowel, the reduced vowels are in modern Russian alternately given full voicing and drop, and the last yer in this sequence will drop. There are some exceptions to this rule, usually considered to be the result of analogy with other words or other inflected forms of the same word, with a different original pattern of reduced vowels.

Since the usage of the terminal yer died out between the 15th and the 19th centuries (коммерсантъ was pronounced the same as коммерсант), it fell into disuse and was suppressed by the reform of 1918 as considered an allusion to rich bourgeoisie by the Bolsheviks. Today its usage is nothing more than humorous and can sometimes be encountered on runet.

[edit] Modern Russian: Hard sign

In modern Russian the letter "ъ" is called the hard sign. It has no phonetic value of its own, and is purely an orthographic device. Its function is to separate a number of prefixes ending in a consonant from a following morpheme that begins with an iotated vowel and is therefore written with one of the letters "я", "ё", "е", or "ю" (that are pronounced as ya, yo, ye and yu only in Russian and Bulgarian languages). The hard sign marks the fact that the [j] continues to be heard in the composition. Example:

• съёмка (sʺyomka): "filming"
• Сёмка (Syomka): male name derived from Семён (Simon)

It therefore functions as a kind of "separation sign" and has been used only sparingly in the aforementioned cases since the spelling reform of 1918. The consonant before the hard sign often becomes somewhat softened (palatalized) due to the following iotation. As a result, in the twentieth century there were occasional proposals to eliminate the hard sign altogether, and replace it with the soft sign ь, which always marks the softening of a consonant. However, in part because the degree of softening before ъ is not uniform, these proposals were never implemented. The hard sign ъ is written after both native and borrowed prefixes. In recent years, it has sometimes been seen in borrowed words before the letter и, to mark a greater separation of the constituent syllables (the letter и does not mark an iotated vowel). Such written usage has not yet been formally codified (See also Russian phonology and Russian orthography).

[edit] Old Russian: Hard sign

In pre-revolutionary Russia, the hard sign was marked by an apostrophe (') as first determined by Peter the Great and used throughout the Romanov Dynasty. Examples:

• OR под'ём {{{1}}} → R подъём {{{1}}} (pod'iom) "rising"
• OR под'езд {{{1}}} → R подъезд {{{1}}} (pod'iezd) "porch"
• OR с'ел {{{1}}} → R съел {{{1}}} (s'iel) "he ate"

[edit] Bulgarian language

In Bulgarian, the er golyam is used for phoneme representing the mid back unrounded vowel (IPA /ɤ̞/), sometimes also notated as a schwa (/ə/). It sounds approximately somewhere between the Russian 'o' and 'э'.

Since there is almost no palatalization in between the vowels in Bulgarian, no hard sign was ever used. Some old words might still occur with an apostrophe instead.

[edit] Belarusian language

The letter is absent in the alphabets of the Belarusian. In the Cyrillic Belarusian alphabet its functions are performed by the apostrophe or й. In the Latin Belarusian alphabet (Łacinka) functions of soft and hard signs are performed by j.

[edit] Ukrainian language

In Ukrainian, the hard sign is not used. Its purpose (non-palatalization of a consonant preceding the [j]) is served by an apostrophe.