Yery

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Heading=Cyrillic letter Yery


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Yery or Yeru (Ы, ы, usually called ы IPA| [ɨ] in modern Russian) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. It represents the phoneme IPA|/i/ after non-palatalized (hard) consonants in the Belarusian, Rusyn and Russian alphabets. Because of phonological processes, the actual realization of IPA|/i/ after most consonants (д, з, л, н, р, с, т, or ц) is retracted to a close central unrounded vowel IPA| [ɨ] , or IPA| [ʷi] after the labials б, в, м, п. The letter cannot appear after any of the other consonants not already listed, or after vowels; in such cases, и replaces it in its grammatical functions.

Like many Cyrillic letters, originally the letter yery was formed from a ligature ЪІ—formed from Yer ъ and I (then і, dotless or with two dots) or Izhe (и, but previously written like н). In medieval manuscripts, it is almost without exception found as ъі or ън. Once the letters ъ and ь subsequently lost their values as vowels in the Slavic languages, the current form ы evolved.

The letter is usually Romanized in English and most other West-European languages as "y", e.g. Krylov (family name, Крылов), although it may be used for other purposes as well (in combinations), this spelling matches Polish where Latin "y" represents the same sound, Russian ы is used to transliterate Polish words with "y" into Cyrillic (e.g. Maryla - Марыля).

There are several proper and common nouns of non-Russian origin (including some geographical names in Russia) with beginning with the letter: Ytyk-Kyuyol (Ытык-Кюёль), Ygyatta (Ыгыатта), a village and a river in Sakha (Yakutia) Republic respectively, and Eulji Mundeok (Ыльчи Мундок), a Korean military leader, though this is pronounced as if it were spelled with и.

Yery is no longer found in the Ukrainian alphabet.

Early Cyrillic Yery

The Early Cyrillic alphabet used slavonic|Ꙑ, ꙑ, a ligature of Ъ and a І (Minuscule: ъ and a unicode|ӏ back then instead of Ы, ы.

References

* [http://www.alphadictionary.com/rusgrammar/index.html]