I with bowl | |
---|---|
Ь ь | |
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Usage | |
Writing system | Latin script |
Type | Alphabetic |
Language of origin | Yañalif |
Sound values | [ɯ] [ɤ̆] [ɨ] |
Other | |
Writing direction | Left-to-Right |
This article containsphonetic transcriptions in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. For the distinction between[ ],/ / and ⟨ ⟩, seeIPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. |
Latin yeru[1][2] orI with bowl[3][dubious –discuss] (majuscule:Ь, minuscule:ь)[note 1] is an additional letter of the Latin alphabet based on the Cyrillicsoft sign. It was introduced in 1928 into the reformedYañalif, and later into other alphabets for Soviet minority languages. The letter was designed specifically to represent the non-front close vowel sounds[ɨ] and[ɯ].[4] Thus, this letter corresponds to the letter⟨I ı⟩ in modern Turkic alphabets,[5][6][7][8][9][10] and the letteryery (⟨Ы ы⟩) in Cyrillic.
The letter was originally included in theYañalif, and later also in the alphabets of theKurdish,Abaza,Sami,Ingrian,Kalmyk,Komi,Tsakhur,Azerbaijani andBashkir languages, as well as in the draft reform of theUdmurt alphabet. During the project of the Latinization of the Russian language, this letter corresponded to the Cyrillic letter⟨Ы ы⟩. In Kalmyk, however, it represented palatalisation of the preceding consonant, thus corresponding to the Cyrillic homoglyph⟨Ь ь⟩.
In languages and alphabets that used this letter, the lowercase form of B was asmall capital⟨ʙ⟩ so that there would be no confusion between⟨b⟩ and⟨ь⟩.
A Latin letter I with bowl hasn't been adopted intoUnicode because of the concern that encoding it could open the door to "duplicating the whole Cyrillic alphabet as Latin letters."[1][2][11][3] Instead, computer and mobile users can substitute similar letters, eitherЬ ь orƄ ƅ (Latin letter tone six, the letter that was previously used in theZhuang alphabet to denote the sixth tone[˧]).