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 | It has been suggested that this article besplit out into articles titledLittle Yus,Big Yus andBlended Yus. (Discuss)(August 2023) |
| Yus | |
|---|---|
       | |
| Usage | |
| Writing system | Cyrillic |
| Type | Alphabetic |
| Sound values | Little:[ɛ̃], Big:[ɔ̃] Little:[jɛ̃] Big:[jɔ̃] |
| History | |
| Descendants | • Я (from Ѧ) • 𐍵 (from Ѧ) • Ꙟ (from ѫ) |
| Other | |
| Associated numbers | Little: 900 (Cyrillic numerals) |
| 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. | |
Little yus (Ѧ, ѧ; italics:Ѧ, ѧ) andbig yus (Ѫ, ѫ; italics:Ѫ, ѫ), orjus, are letters of theCyrillic script[1] representing twoCommon Slavonicnasal vowels in theearly Cyrillic andGlagolitic alphabets. Each can occur iniotated form (Ѩ ѩ, Ѭ ѭ), formed asligatures with thedecimal i (І). Other yus letters areclosed little yus (Ꙙ ꙙ),iotated closed little yus (Ꙝ ꙝ) andblended yus (Ꙛ ꙛ).
Phonetically, little yus represents a nasalized front vowel, possibly[ɛ̃] (like the French ‘in’ in “cinq” or Polish 'ę' in “kęs”), while big yus represents a nasalized back vowel, such as IPA[ɔ̃] (like the French ‘on’ in “bombon” or Polish 'ą' in “kąt”). This is also suggested by the appearance of each as a 'stacked' digraph of 'Am' and 'Om' respectively.[citation needed]
The names of the letters do not implycapitalization, as both little and big yus exist inmajuscule andminuscule variants.
All modern Slavic languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet have lost the nasal vowels (at least in their standard varieties), making yus unnecessary.
Big yus was a part of theBulgarian alphabet until 1945. However, by then, in the eastern dialects, the back nasal was pronounced the same way asъ[ɤ]. Since the new Soviet-sponsored regime wanted to break with the one which it replaced at the end ofWWII and closer align the official language with Russian, which was closer to the eastern dialects and had alreadyremoved its Big Yus, the western pronunciations were deemed unliterary, and the letter was gone.[citation needed]
There were someBulgarian and Macedonian dialects spoken aroundThessaloniki andKastoria in northern Greece (Kostur dialect,Solun dialect) that still preserve a nasal pronunciation e.g.[ˈkɤ̃deˈɡrẽdeʃˈmiloˈt͡ʃẽdo] (Къде гредеш, мило чедо?; "Where are you going, dear child?"), which could be spelledpre-reform as "Кѫдѣ грѧдешъ, мило чѧдо?" with big and little yus.
On a visit toRazlog, in Bulgaria'sPirin Macedonia, in 1955, the Russian dialectologistSamuil Bernstein noticed that the nasal pronunciation of words like[ˈrɤ̃ka] (hand),[ˈt͡ʃẽdo] (child) could still be heard from some of the older women of the village. To the younger people, the pronunciation was completely alien; they would think that the old ladies were speakingModern Greek.[2]
InRussia, the little yus came to be pronounced as an iotated/ja/ (я) in the middle or at the end of a word and therefore came to represent that sound also elsewhere;[citation needed] the modern letterя is an adaptation of its cursive form of the 17th century, enshrined by thetypographical reform of 1708. (That is also whyя in Russian often corresponds to nasalizedę inPolish; cf. Russianпять; Polishpięć.)
InPolish, which is a Slavic language written in theLatin alphabet, the letterĘ ę has the phonetic value of little yus, andĄ ą has that of big yus. Theiotated forms are writtenię/ję andią/ją, respectively. However, the phonemes writtenę andą 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. (Kashubian, the closest language to Polish, uses the letterã instead ofę, for example in wordjãzëk (pol.język)).
Little and big yuses can also be found in theRomanian Cyrillic alphabet, used until 1862. Little yus was used for/ja/ and big yus for unknown vowels, transcribed in later Romanian as/ɨ/ and/ə/. NowRomanian uses theLatin alphabet and/ɨ/ is writtenÎî orÂâ./ə/ is written asĂă.
One of the first transcriptions of the big yus as î in Romanian is found inAcatist (1801,Sibiu) bySamuil Micu-Klein.
Little yus in theSlovak alphabet has been substituted bya (desať,načať),e (plesať), iotatedia (žiadať,kliatba,mesiac),ie (bdieť) andä in several cases (pamäť,päť,svätý). Big yus is transliterated and pronounced asu, or accentedú (budeš,muž,mučeník,ruka,navyknúť,pristúpiť,púť,usnúť). Iotated, and closed iotated form of little yus occur asja (e.g.jazyk,svoja,javiť,jasle).
InRuthenian language, little yus was used to transcribe the soundja (as in руска(ѧ) мова ("Ruthenian language") or ѧзыкъ ("language")). This evolved into and corresponded with the letter я in the descendant languages ofBelarusian,Ukrainian, andRusyn.
TheInterslavic language, a zonal,constructed, semi-artificial language based on Proto-Slavic and Old Church Slavonic modified based on the commonalities between living Slavic languages, allows (though does not encourage it for intelligibility purposes) to use both the little and big yus when writing in the scientific variety of its Cyrillic script. The letters correspond directly to their etymological values from Proto-Slavic, but do not retain the nasal pronunciation, instead going for one aiming to convey the "middle-ground" sounds found in etymologically corresponding letters in living Slavic languages. The little yus corresponds to the Latin letter "ę", while the big yus to "ų" in the etymological Latin script.
The iotated versions are not part of the standard scientific vocabulary, where the yuses are instead accompanied by the Cyrillic letter "ј", also used in the modernSerbian andMacedonian alphabets, though their use is optionally permissible for aesthetic reasons if one opts for using the more standard iotated vowels in their writing, so that consistency is preserved.
As of May 2019, no official "scientific Cyrillic" is endorsed by the Interslavic Commission for the reason that while Latin is easier to modify by simply adding diacritics, Cyrillic requires completely distinct graphemes. That is very likely to significantly hamper intelligibility for first-time readers, so yus' should not be used in writing when aiming to convey an easily understandable message.
| Preview | 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 | ||||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
| Unicode | 1126 | U+0466 | 1127 | U+0467 | 1128 | U+0468 | 1129 | U+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 |
| Preview | 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 | ||||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
| Unicode | 1130 | U+046A | 1131 | U+046B | 1132 | U+046C | 1133 | U+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 |
| Preview | Ꙛ | ꙛ | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BLENDED YUS | CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BLENDED YUS | ||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex |
| Unicode | 42586 | U+A65A | 42587 | U+A65B |
| UTF-8 | 234 153 154 | EA 99 9A | 234 153 155 | EA 99 9B |
| Numeric character reference | Ꙛ | Ꙛ | ꙛ | ꙛ |
| Preview | Ꙙ | ꙙ | Ꙝ | ꙝ | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER CLOSED LITTLE YUS | CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER CLOSED LITTLE YUS | CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IOTIFIED CLOSED LITTLE YUS | CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IOTIFIED CLOSED LITTLE YUS | ||||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
| Unicode | 42584 | U+A658 | 42585 | U+A659 | 42588 | U+A65C | 42589 | U+A65D |
| UTF-8 | 234 153 152 | EA 99 98 | 234 153 153 | EA 99 99 | 234 153 156 | EA 99 9C | 234 153 157 | EA 99 9D |
| Numeric character reference | Ꙙ | Ꙙ | ꙙ | ꙙ | Ꙝ | Ꙝ | ꙝ | ꙝ |
| Preview | ⷽ | ⷾ | ⷿ | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER LITTLE YUS | COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER BIG YUS | COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER IOTIFIED BIG YUS | |||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
| Unicode | 11773 | U+2DFD | 11774 | U+2DFE | 11775 | U+2DFF |
| UTF-8 | 226 183 189 | E2 B7 BD | 226 183 190 | E2 B7 BE | 226 183 191 | E2 B7 BF |
| Numeric character reference | ⷽ | ⷽ | ⷾ | ⷾ | ⷿ | ⷿ |
Italics indicate that the language no longer uses Cyrillic | |||||||||||||||||
| Cyrillic alphabets |
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