Hard sign

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
"Ъ" redirects here. For the Russian newspaper, see Kommersant.
Not to be confused with Neutral Yer.
Cyrillic letter Hard sign
Ꙕ
Ю̂Ꙗ
Я̈Я̂Я̨ԘѤѦꙘѪ
ꙚѨꙜѬѮѰѲѴ
ѶꙞ
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.
Hard sign, from Alexandre Benois' 1904 alphabet book. It shows dub′ (oak), vjezd′ (entry) and syr′ (cheese).

The letter Ъ ъ (italics Ъ, ъ) of the

Cyrillic alphabet. The letter is called back yer or back jer and yor or jor in the pre-reform Russian orthography, in Old East Slavic, and in Old Church Slavonic
.

Originally the yer denoted an ultra-short or

rounded vowel.[citation needed] It is one of two reduced vowels that are collectively known as the yers
in Slavic philology.

Bulgarian

In Bulgarian, the er goljam ("ер голям") is the 27th letter of the alphabet. It is used for the phoneme representing the mid back unrounded vowel /ɤ̞/, sometimes also notated as a schwa /ə/. It sounds somewhat like the vowel sound in some pronunciations of English "but" [bʌ̘t] or Mandarin "de" (的) [tɤ]. It sounds similar to the Romanian letter "ă" (for example, in "băiat" [bəˈjat̪]) and Estonian letter õ. In unstressed positions (in the same manner as ⟨а⟩), ⟨ъ⟩ is normally pronounced /ɐ/, which sounds like Sanskrit "a" (अ), Portuguese "terra" [ˈtɛʁɐ], or the German -er in the word "Kinder" [ˈkʰɪndɐ]. Unlike the schwa sound in English, the Bulgarian /ɤ̞/ can appear in unstressed as well as in stressed syllables, for example in "въ́здух" ['vɤ̞zdux] 'air' or even at the beginning of words (only in the word "ъ́гъл" ['ɤ̞gɐɫ] ‘angle’).

Before the reform of 1945, this sound was written with two letters, "ъ" and "

stressed
).

It is variously transliterated as ⟨ǎ⟩, ⟨ă⟩, ⟨ą⟩, ⟨ë⟩, ⟨ę⟩, ⟨ų⟩, ⟨ŭ⟩, or simply ⟨a⟩, ⟨u⟩ and even ⟨y⟩.

Belarusian and Ukrainian

The letter ъ is not used in the alphabets of

Łacinka), as in Polish
, the hard sign's functions are performed by a following j rather than the i that would be present after a palatalized consonant.

Rusyn

In the

щ. In Pannonian Rusyn
, ъ is not present.

Macedonian

Although Macedonian is most closely related to Bulgarian, its writing system does not use the yer. During the creation of the modern Macedonian orthography in the late 1944 and the first half of 1945, the yer was one of the subjects of arguments. The problem was that the corresponding vowel exists in many dialects of Macedonian, but it is not systematically present in the west-central dialect, the base on which the Macedonian language standard was being developed.

Among the leaders of the Macedonian alphabet and orthography design team, Venko Markovski argued for using the letter yer, much like the Bulgarian orthography does, but Blaže Koneski was against it. An early version of the alphabet promulgated on December 28, 1944, contained the yer, but in the final version of the alphabet, approved in May 1945, Koneski's point of view prevailed, and no yer was used.[2]

The absence of yer leads to an apostrophe often being used in Macedonian to print texts composed in the language varieties that use the corresponding vowel, such as the Bulgarian writer

Konstantin Miladinov's poem Т'га за југ (Bulgarian: Тъга за юг).[2]

Russian

Modern Russian: hard sign

In Modern Russian, the letter "ъ" is called the hard sign (твёрдый знак / tvjordyj znak). 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 consonants from subsequent morphemes that begin with iotated vowels. In native words, it is therefore only seen in front of the letters "я", "е", "ё", and "ю" (ja, je, jo, and ju in English). The hard sign marks the fact that the sound [j] continues to be heard separately in the composition. For example:

  • сесть [ˈsʲesʲtʲ] sjestʹ 'sit down'
  • съесть [ˈsjesʲtʲ] sʺjestʹ perfective form of 'eat'

It therefore functions as a kind of "separation sign" and has been used only sparingly in the aforementioned cases since the

ǂHoan). However, such usage is not uniform and, except for transliteration of Chinese proper names, has not yet been formally codified (see also Russian phonology and Russian orthography
).

Final yer pre-1918

Before 1918, a hard sign was normally written at the end of a word when following a non-palatal consonant, even though it had no effect on pronunciation. For example, the word for "male cat" was written "котъ" (kotʺ) before the reform, and "кот" (kot) after it. This old usage of ъ was eliminated by the spelling reform of 1918, implemented by the

Petrograd refusing to follow the new rules. To force the printing houses to comply, red sailors of the Baltic Fleet confiscated type carrying the "parasite letters".[3][4] Printers were forced to use a non-standard apostrophe
for the separating hard sign, for example:

  • pre-reform: съѣздъ (s'jezd')
  • transitional: с’езд (s’jezd)
  • post-reform: съезд (s'jezd)

In the beginning of the 1920s, the hard sign was gradually restored as the separator. The apostrophe was still used afterward on some typewriters that did not include the hard sign, which became the rarest letter in Russian. In Belarusian and Ukrainian, the hard sign was never brought back, and the apostrophe is still in use today.

According to the rough estimation presented in Lev Uspensky's popular linguistics book A Word On Words (Слово о словах / Slovo o slovakh), which expresses strong support for the reform, the final hard sign made up about 3.5% of printed text and thus wasted paper and ink, which provided the economic grounds for the reform.

Printing houses set up by Russian

Dahl’s Explanatory Dictionary was repeatedly (1935, 1955) reprinted in compliance with the old rules of spelling
and the pre-reform alphabet.

Today the final yer is sometimes used in Russian

copywriters may apply the simple rule of putting the hard sign after a consonant at the end of a word but ignore the other former spelling rules, such as the use of ѣ and і.[5]
It is also sometimes encountered in humorous personal writing adding to the text an "old-fashioned flavour" or separately denoting true.

Languages of the Caucasus and Crimean Tatar

In Cyrillic orthographies for various

ejectives. For example, in Ossetian, the hard sign is part of the digraphs гъ /ʁ/, къ /kʼ/, пъ /pʼ/, тъ /tʼ/, хъ /q/, цъ /tsʼ/, чъ /tʃʼ/, as well as the trigraphs къу /kʷʼ/ and хъу /qʷ/. The hard sign is used in the Crimean Tatar language for the same purpose. In addition, in Chechen
, the hard sign can represent a glottal stop.

Tajik

In the Cyrillic version of the Tajik alphabet, ъ denotes a glottal stop, usually found in Arabic loanwords.

Related letters and other similar characters

Computing codes

Character information
Preview Ъ ъ ᲆ
Unicode name CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER HARD SIGN CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER HARD SIGN CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER TALL HARD SIGN
Encodings decimal hex dec hex dec hex
Unicode 1066 U+042A 1098 U+044A 7302 U+1C86
UTF-8 208 170 D0 AA 209 138 D1 8A 225 178 134 E1 B2 86
Numeric character reference Ъ Ъ ъ ъ ᲆ ᲆ
Named character reference Ъ ъ
KOI8-R and KOI8-U 255 FF 223 DF
Code page 855 159 9F 158 9E
Code page 866 154 9A 234 EA
Windows-1251 218 DA 250 FA
Macintosh Cyrillic
 154 9A 250 FA

References

  1. ^ Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Pismenica serbskoga iezika, po govoru prostoga naroda, 1814.
  2. ^
    ISBN 978-9004250765
  3. ^ ""Лексикон" Валерия Скорбилина Архив выпусков программы, "ЛЕКСИКОН" № 238, интервью с Натальей Юдиной, деканом факультета русского языка и литературы". Archived from the original on 2009-06-04. Retrieved 2014-03-20.
  4. ^ Слово о словах, Лев Успенский, Лениздат, 1962, p. 156
  5. ^ "§ 23. Немного о дореволюционной орфографии". www.artlebedev.ru (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2022-03-02. Retrieved 2023-04-27.

External links

  • The dictionary definition of Ъ at Wiktionary
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