Little yus (Ѧ ѧ) and big yus (Ѫ ѫ), or jus, are letters of the
Cyrillic script
The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, ...
[ representing two ]Common Slavonic
Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl., PS.; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic) is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium B.C. through the 6th ...
nasal vowel
A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are produced wit ...
s in the early Cyrillic alphabet, early Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabet, Glagolitic alphabets. Each can occur in iotated
In Slavic languages, iotation (, ) is a form of palatalization that occurs when a consonant comes into contact with a palatal approximant from the succeeding phoneme. The is represented by iota (ι) in the Cyrillic alphabet and the Greek alphab ...
form (Ѩ ѩ, Ѭ ѭ), formed as typographic ligature, ligatures with the decimal i
The dotted i (І і; italics: '), also called decimal i (и десятеричное, after its former numeric value), is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It commonly represents the close front unrounded vowel , like the pronunciation o ...
(І). Other yus letters are blended yus (Ꙛ ꙛ), closed little yus (Ꙙ ꙙ) and iotated closed little yus (Ꙝ ꙝ).
Phonetically, little yus represents a nasalized front vowel, possibly , while big yus represents a nasalized back vowel, such as IPA . This is also suggested by the appearance of each as a 'stacked' digraph of 'Am' and 'om' respectively.
The names of the letters do not imply capitalization
Capitalization (American English) or capitalisation (British English) is writing a word with its first letter as a capital letter (uppercase letter) and the remaining letters in lower case, in writing systems with a case distinction. The term a ...
, as both little and big yus exist in majuscule
Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
and minuscule
Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
variants.
Disappearance
All modern Slavic languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet have lost the nasal vowels (at least in their standard varieties), making Yus unnecessary.
In Bulgarian and Macedonian
Big Yus was a part of the Bulgarian
Bulgarian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Bulgaria
* Bulgarians, a South Slavic ethnic group
* Bulgarian language, a Slavic language
* Bulgarian alphabet
* A citizen of Bulgaria, see Demographics of Bulgaria
* Bul ...
alphabet until 1945. However by then, in the eastern dialects, the back nasal was pronounced the same way as ъ . Because the language is based mainly on them, the western
pronunciations were deemed unliterary, and the letter was gone.
There were some Bulgarian and Macedonian dialects spoken around Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki (; el, Θεσσαλονίκη, , also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece, with over one million inhabitants in its Thessaloniki metropolitan area, metropolitan area, and the capi ...
and Kastoria
Kastoria ( el, Καστοριά, ''Kastoriá'' ) is a city in northern Greece in the modern regions of Greece, region of Western Macedonia. It is the capital of Kastoria (regional unit), Kastoria regional unit, in the Geographic regions of Gree ...
in northern Greece (Kostur dialect
The Kostur dialect ( mk, Костурски дијалект, ''Kosturski dijalekt''), is a member of the Southwestern subgroup of the Southeastern group of dialects of the Macedonian language. This dialect is mainly spoken in and around the ...
, Solun dialect) that still preserve a nasal pronunciation e.g. (; "Where are you going, dear child?"), which could be spelled pre-reform as "" with big and little yus.
On a visit to Razlog
Razlog ( bg, Разлог ) is a town and ski resort in Razlog Municipality, Blagoevgrad Province in southwestern Bulgaria. It is situated in the Razlog Valley and was first mentioned during the reign of Byzantine emperor Basil II.
The municipali ...
, in Bulgaria's Pirin Macedonia
Pirin Macedonia or Bulgarian Macedonia ( bg, Пиринска Македония; Българска Македония) (''Pirinska Makedoniya or Bulgarska Makedoniya'') is the third-biggest part of the geographical region Macedonia located on t ...
, in 1955, the Russian dialectologist Samuil Bernstein Samuil Borisovich Bernstein (russian: Самуил Борисович Бернштейн; surname also transcribed as Bernshteyn; , Barguzin – October 6, 1997, Moscow) was a Soviet linguist, known for his work on Slavic languages, in particular B ...
noticed that the nasal pronunciation of words like (hand), (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 speaking Modern Greek
Modern Greek (, , or , ''Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa''), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the ...
.[October 27, 1955 entry in Bernstein's diary]
Зигзаги памяти
Bernstein transcribed the words as рънка, чендо.
In Russian
In Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
, the little Yus came to be pronounced as an iotated () in the middle or at the end of a word and therefore came to represent that sound also elsewhere; the modern letter is an adaptation of its cursive form of the 17th century, enshrined by the typographical reform of 1708. (That is also why in Russian often corresponds to nasalized ' in Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
; cf. Russian ; Polish '.)
In Polish
In Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
, which is a Slavic language written in the Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
, the letter '' Ę ę'' has the phonetic value of little Yus, and '' Ą ą'' has that of big Yus. The iotated
In Slavic languages, iotation (, ) is a form of palatalization that occurs when a consonant comes into contact with a palatal approximant from the succeeding phoneme. The is represented by iota (ι) in the Cyrillic alphabet and the Greek alphab ...
forms are written ''ię/ję'' and ''ią/ją'', respectively. However, the phonemes written ''ę'' and ''ą'' 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 letter '' ã'' instead of ''ę''.)
In Romanian
Little and big yuses can also be found in the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
**Romanian cuisine, traditional ...
, used until 1862. Little Yus was used for and big Yus for unknown vowels, transcribed in later Romanian as and . Now Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
**Romanian cuisine, traditional ...
uses the Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
and is written Îî or Ââ. is written as Ăă.
One of the first transcriptions of the big yus as î in Romanian is found in Samuel Klain, Acathist, Sibii, 1801.
In Slovak
Little yus in the Slovak alphabet has been substituted by ''a'' (''desať'', ''načať''), ''e'' (''plesať''), iotated ''ia'' (''žiadať'', ''kliatba'', ''mesiac''), ''ie'' (''bdieť'') and ''ä'' in several cases (''pamäť'', ''päť'', ''svätý''). Big yus is transliterated and pronounced as ''u'', or accented ''ú'' (''budeš'', ''muž'', ''mučeník'', ''ruka'', ''navyknúť'', ''pristúpiť'', ''púť'', ''usnúť''). Iotated, and closed iotated form of little yus occur as ''ja'' (e.g. ''jazyk'', ''svoja'', ''javiť'', ''jasle'').
In Ruthenian
In Ruthenian language
Ruthenian ( Belarusian: руская мова; Ukrainian: руська мова; Ruthenian: руска(ѧ) мова; also see other names) is an exonymic linguonym for a closely-related group of East Slavic linguistic varieties, particularly th ...
, little yus was used to transcribe the sound ''ja'' (as in руска(ѧ) мова ("Ruthenian language") or ѧзыкъ ("language")). This evolved into and corresponded with the letter я in the descendant languages of Belarusian, Ukrainian
Ukrainian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Ukraine
* Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe
* Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine
* So ...
, and Rusyn
Rusyn may refer to:
* Rusyns, Rusyn people, an East Slavic people
** Pannonian Rusyns, Pannonian Rusyn people, a branch of Rusyn people
** Lemkos, a branch of Rusyn (or Ukrainian) people
** Boykos, a branch of Rusyn (or Ukrainian) people
* Rusyn l ...
.
In Interslavic
The Interslavic 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 modern Serbian alphabet
The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet ( sr, / , ) is a variation of the Cyrillic script used to write the Serbian language, updated in 1818 by Serbian linguist Vuk Karadžić. It is one of the two alphabets used to write standard modern Serbian, th ...
, 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 yuses should not be used in writing when aiming to convey an easily understandable message.
Related letters and other similar characters
* Я я : Cyrillic letter Ya
* Ѣ ѣ : Cyrillic letter Yat
, bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця
, fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs
, fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic
, fam3 = Phoenician
, fam4 = G ...
* Ę ę : Latin letter E with ogonek - a Polish letter
* Ą ą : Latin letter A with ogonek - a Polish letter
Computing codes
References
[{{cite web , url=http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0400.pdf , title=Cyrillic: Range: 0400–04FF , work=The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0 , year=2010 , page=41 , access-date=2011-10-31]
Cyrillic ligatures