Yus

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Cyrillic letter Yus

Unicode (hex)
majuscule: U+0466 046a 0468 046c
minuscule: U+0467 046b 0469 046d
Cyrillic script Slavic letters
А	Б	В	Г	Ґ	Д	Ђ
Ѓ	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	Ҕ
Ӻ	Ӷ	Ԁ	Ԃ	Ꚉ	Ӗ	Ӂ
Җ	Ӝ	Ԅ	Ҙ	Ӟ	Ԑ	Ӡ
Ԇ	Ӣ	Ҋ	Ӥ	Қ	Ӄ	Ҡ
Ҟ	Ҝ	Ԟ	Ԛ	Ӆ	Ԓ	Ԡ
Ԉ	Ԕ	Ӎ	Ӊ	Ң	Ӈ	Ҥ
Ԣ	Ԋ	Ӧ	Ө	Ӫ	Ҩ	Ԥ
Ҧ	Ҏ	Ԗ	Ҫ	Ԍ	Ҭ	Ԏ
Ӯ	Ӱ	Ӳ	Ү	Ұ	Ҳ	Ӽ
Ӿ	Һ	Ԧ	Ҵ	Ҷ	Ӵ	Ӌ
Ҹ	Ꚇ	Ҽ	Ҿ	Ӹ	Ҍ	Ӭ
Ԙ	Ԝ	Ӏ
Archaic letters
Ҁ	Ѻ	Ѹ	Ѡ	Ѿ	Ѣ	Ꙓ
Ꙗ	Ѥ	Ѧ	Ѫ	Ѩ	Ѭ	Ѯ
Ѱ	Ѳ	Ѵ	Ѷ	Ꙟ
List of Cyrillic letters
Cyrillic digraphs

Little Yus (Ѧ ѧ) and Big Yus (Ѫ ѫ), or Jus, are letters of the Cyrillic script,^[1] representing two Common Slavonic nasal vowels in the early Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets. Each can occur in iotified form (Ѩ ѩ, Ѭ ѭ), formed as ligatures with the letter Decimal I (І). Other Yus letters are Blended Yus (Ꙛ ꙛ), Closed Little Yus (Ꙙ ꙙ) and Iotified Closed Little Yus (Ꙝ ꙝ).

Phonetically, Little Yus represents a nasalized front vowel, possibly [ɛ̃], while Big Yus represents a nasalized back vowel, such as IPA [ɔ̃]. This is also suggested by the appearance of each as a 'stacked' digraph of 'Am' and 'om' respectively.

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

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

Big Yus was a part of the Bulgarian alphabet until 1945. However, by that time the back nasal was pronounced the same way as ъ [ə]. 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 Macedonian dialects around Thessaloniki and Kastoria in Northern Greece that still preserve a nasal pronunciation: [ˈkə̃(n)de ˈgrẽ(n)deʃ ˈmilo ˈt͡ʃẽ(n)do], 'Where are you going, dear child?').

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; Polish pięć.) The disappearance of the nasal vowels in Russian has gone further than elsewhere, with many Russian speakers even omitting /n/ in rapid speech in other places (for example, раньше might be realized as райше, or станет as стает).

In Polish, which is a Slavic language written with Latin alphabet, the letter Ę ę has the phonetic value of Little Yus, while Ą ą has that of Big Yus. The iotated forms are written ię, ią, ję, ją in Polish. However, the phonemes written ę and ą are not directly descended from those represented by Little and Big Yus, but developed after the original nasals merged in Polish and then diverged again.

Little and Big Yus can also be found in the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet, used until about 1860. Little Yus was used for /ja/ and Big Yus for /ɨ/.

Related letters and other similar characters

Computing codes

character	Ѧ		ѧ		Ѩ		ѩ
Unicode name	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER LITTLE YUS		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER LITTLE YUS		CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IOTIFIED LITTLE YUS		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IOTIFIED LITTLE YUS
character encoding	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	1126	0466	1127	0467	1128	0468	1129	0469
UTF-8	209 166	D1 A6	209 167	D1 A7	209 168	D1 A8	209 169	D1 A9
Numeric character reference	Ѧ	Ѧ	ѧ	ѧ	Ѩ	Ѩ	ѩ	ѩ

character	Ѫ		ѫ		Ѭ		ѭ
Unicode name	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BIG YUS		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BIG YUS		CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IOTIFIED BIG YUS		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IOTIFIED BIG YUS
character encoding	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	1130	046A	1131	046B	1132	046C	1133	046D
UTF-8	209 170	D1 AA	209 171	D1 AB	209 172	D1 AC	209 173	D1 AD
Numeric character reference	Ѫ	Ѫ	ѫ	ѫ	Ѭ	Ѭ	ѭ	ѭ

References

^ "Cyrillic: Range: 0400–04FF". The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0. 2010. p. 41. http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0400.pdf. Retrieved 2011-10-31.