Yeru or Eru (Ы ы; italics: Ы ы or Ы ы; italics: Ы ы), usually called Y in modern Russian language or Yery or Ery historically and in modern Church Slavonic, is a letter in the Cyrillic script. It represents the close central unrounded vowel (more rear or upper than i) after non-palatalised (hard) consonants in the Belarusian and .
The letter is usually romanised , such that the family name Крылов is usually written Krylov in English language and most other West European languages. That spelling matches the Polish alphabet used for Polish language, whose letter represents the same sound. Similarly, is used for in the cyrillisation of Polish, such that the name Maryla appears as Марыля in Russian. Note, however, that the letter also appears in romanisation of other Russian letters both in isolation (such as , ) and as part of digraphs (such as , ).
In Rusyn language, represents the close-mid back unrounded vowel . In most Turkic languages that use Cyrillic script, such as Kazakh language and Kyrgyz language, is used to represent the close back unrounded vowel /ɯ/ instead.
Origin
Like
many other Cyrillic letters, it was originally from a ligature (which is represented in Unicode as Yeru with Back Yer), formed from
Yer and Dotted I (formerly written either dotless or with two dots) or Izhe ( which formerly resembled ). In Medieval manuscripts, it is almost always found as or . The modern form first occurred in South Slavic manuscripts following the loss of palatalization of word-final and preconsonantal consonants, so the letters and became confused; since the end of the 14th century, came to be used in East Slavic manuscripts.
Usage
While vowel letters in the Cyrillic alphabet may be divided into iotated and non-iotated pairs (for example, and both represent , the latter denoting a preceding palatalised consonant), is more complicated. It appears only after hard consonants, its phonetic value differs from , and there is some scholarly disagreement as to whether or not and denote different phonemes.
In Russian
There are no native Russian words that begin with (except for the specific verb ыкать: "to say the -sound"), but there are many proper and common nouns of non-Russian origin (including some geographical names in
Russia) that begin with it:
Kim Jong-un (Ким Чен Ын) and Ŭlchi Mundŏk (Ыльчи Мундок), a Korean military leader; and
Ytyk-Kyuyol (Ытык-Кюёль),
Ygyatta (Ыгыатта), a village and a river in
Sakha Republic respectively.
In Ukrainian
In the Ukrainian alphabet, yery is not used since the language lacks the sound .
[Larysa Pavlenko Historical grammar of the Ukrainian language (Історична граматика української мови). The editorial and publishing department of the Volyn National University of Lesia Ukrainka. Lutsk, 2010. pages 47-48] In the Ukrainian alphabet, yery merged with i and was phased out in the second half of the 19th century.
[Hlushchenko, V. Yer, yery (ЄР, ЄРИ). Ukrainian Language. Encyclopedia (Izbornik).] According to the Ukrainian academician Hryhoriy Pivtorak, the letter was replaced with so called "Cyrillic i" , which in Ukrainian represents the sound , which appeared by the merger of the earlier sounds ɨ and i. Ukrainian also had newly developed the sound i from various origins, which is represented by ("Cyrillic dotted i").
[ Yery could be found in several earlier versions of the Ukrainian writing system that were introduced in the 19th century among which were "Pavlovsky writing system", "Sloboda Ukraine (New) writing system", and "Yaryzhka".][Hryhoriy Pivtorak. Orthography (ПРАВОПИС). Izbornik.]
In Rusyn
In Rusyn, it denotes , a sound that is a bit harder than and similar to the Romanian sound î, which is also written â. In some cases, the letter may occur after palatalised consonants (синьый "blue", which never happens in Russian), and it often follows , , and .
In Turkic languages
The letter is also used in Cyrillic-based alphabets of several Turkic languages and Mongolic languages (see the list) for a back vowel vowel . The corresponding letter in Latin-based scripts are (dotless I), I with bowl (Ь ь), and (in Turkmen language).
In Tuvan language, the Cyrillic letter can be written as a double vowel.
In Mongolian
In Mongolian, yery is called (Жаран Нэгийн Ы, "Sixty One Yery"). It is used as a suffix in a lot of words in the Mongolian language. (Кирилл монгол бичгийн дүрэм "Mongolian Cyrillic Alphabet").
Related letters and other similar characters
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И и : Cyrillic letter I
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Й й : Cyrillic letter Short I
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Ъ ъ : Cyrillic letter Yer
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Ꙑ ꙑ : Cyrillic letter Yeru with back Yer
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Ь ь : Soft sign
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Ҍ ҍ : Cyrillic letter semisoft sign
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Ѣ ѣ : Yat
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I ı : Dotless I
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Ь ь : Latin letter I with bowl
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Ư ư : Latin letter U with horn, the 26th letter of the Vietnamese alphabet.
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Y y : Latin letter Y
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Ý ý : Latin letter Ý
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B b : Latin letter B (lowercase)
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L l : Latin letter L (lowercase)
Computing codes
External links
