Yus

Little yus (Ѧ ѧ) and big yus (Ѫ ѫ), or jus, are letters of the Cyrillic script[1] representing two Common Slavonic nasal vowels in the early Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets. Each can occur in iotified form (Ѩ ѩ, Ѭ ѭ), formed as ligatures with the decimal i (І). Other yus letters are blended yus (Ꙛ ꙛ), closed little yus (Ꙙ ꙙ) and iotified closed little yus (Ꙝ ꙝ).

Cyrillic little yus (left) and big yus (right); normal forms (above) and iotified (below)

Handwritten little yus

Cyrillic letter Yus
Phonetic usage:	Little: [ɛ̃], Big: [ɔ̃] Little: [ɛŋ] Big: [ɔŋ]
The Cyrillic script
Slavic letters
А Б В Г Ґ Д Ђ Ѓ Е Ѐ Ё Є Ж З З́ Ѕ И Ѝ І Ї Й Ј К Л Љ М Н Њ О Ō П Р С С́ Т Ћ Ќ У Ӯ Ў Ф Х Ц Ч Џ Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я
Non-Slavic letters
А́ А̀ Ӑ А̄ А̊ А̃ Ӓ Ӓ̄ В̌ Ә Ә́ Ә̃ Ӛ Ӕ Ғ Г̧ Г̑ Г̄ Г̣ Г̌ Ҕ Ӻ Ғ̌ Ӷ Ԁ Ԃ Ꚃ Ꚁ Ꚉ Д̆ Д̣ Ԫ Ԭ Д̆ Ӗ Е̄ Е̃ Ё̄ Є̈ Ӂ Җ Ꚅ Ӝ Ԅ Ҙ Ӟ З̌ З̱ З̣ Ԑ Ԑ̈ Ӡ Ԇ Ӣ И̃ Ҋ Ӥ И́ Қ Ӄ Ҡ Ҟ Ҝ Ԟ К̣ Ԛ Ӆ Ԯ Ԓ Ԡ Ԉ Ԕ Ӎ Ӊ Ң Ԩ Ӈ Ҥ Ԣ Ԋ О́ О̀ О̆ О̂ О̃ Ӧ Ӧ̄ Ө Ө̄ Ө́ Ө̆ Ӫ Ҩ Ԥ Ҧ Р̌ Ҏ Ԗ Ҫ С̣ С̱ Ԍ Т̌ Т̣ Ꚑ Ҭ Ꚋ Ꚍ Ԏ У̃ Ӱ Ӱ́ Ӳ Ү Ү́ Ұ Х̣ Х̱ Х̮ Х̑ Ҳ Ӽ Ӿ Һ Һ̈ Ԧ Ꚕ Ҵ Ꚏ Ҷ Ӵ Ӌ Ҹ Ꚓ Ꚗ Ꚇ Ҽ Ҿ Ы̆ Ы̄ Ӹ Ҍ Э̆ Э̄ Э̇ Ӭ Ӭ́ Ӭ̄ Ю̆ Ю̈ Ю̈́ Ю̄ Я̆ Я̄ Я̈ Ԙ Ԝ Ӏ
Archaic letters
Ꙁ Ꙃ Ꙅ Ꙇ Ꙉ Ҁ Ѻ ОУ Ꙋ Ѡ Ѽ Ꙍ Ѿ Ꙏ Ѣ Ꙑ Ꙓ Ꙕ Ꙗ Ѥ Ѧ Ꙙ Ѫ Ꙛ Ѩ Ꙝ Ѭ Ѯ Ѱ Ѳ Ѵ Ѷ Ꙟ Ꙡ Ꙣ Ꙥ Ꙧ Ꙩ Ꙫ Ꙭ ꙮ Ꚙ Ꚛ
List of Cyrillic letters Cyrillic digraphs

This beard tax token from 1705 contains Ѧ

Phonetically, little yus represents a nasalized front vowel, possibly [ɛ̃], while big yus represents a nasalized back vowel, such as IPA [ɔ̃]. 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, as both little and big yus exist in majuscule and minuscule 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 alphabet until 1945. However, by then, in the eastern dialects, the back nasal was pronounced the same way as ъ [ɤ]. 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 and Kastoria in northern Greece that still preserve a nasal pronunciation e.g. [ˈkɤ̃de ˈɡrẽdeʃ ˈmilo ˈt͡ʃẽdo] (Къде гредеш, мило чедо?; "Where are you going, dear child?"), which could be spelled pre-reform as "Кѫдѣ грѧдешъ, мило чѧдо?" with big and little yus.

On a visit to Razlog, in Bulgaria's Pirin Macedonia, in 1955, the Russian dialectologist Samuil 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 speaking Modern Greek.[2]

In Russian

In Russia, 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; the modern letter я is an adaptation of its cursive form of the 17th century, enshrined by the typographical reform of 1708. (That is also why я in Russian often corresponds to nasalized ę in Polish; cf. Russian пять; Polish pięć.)

In Polish

In Polish, which is a Slavic language written in the Latin alphabet, the letter Ę ę has the phonetic value of little Yus, and Ą ą has that of big Yus. The iotated forms are written ię, ią, ję, ją in Polish. 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, used until 1862. Little Yus was used for /ja/ and big Yus for /ɨ/. Now Romanian uses the Latin alphabet and /ɨ/ is written Îî or Ââ.

In Slovak

Little yus in Slovak language alphabet has been substituted by a (desať, načať), e (plesať), iotified 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). Iotified, and closed iotified form of little yus occur as ja (e.g. jazyk, svoja, javiť, jasle).

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, 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
• Ę
• Ą

Computing codes

Character information

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	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	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

Character information

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	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	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

Character information

Preview	Ꙛ		ꙛ
Unicode name	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BLENDED YUS		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BLENDED YUS
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	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

Character information

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	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	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

References

1. "Cyrillic: Range: 0400–04FF" (PDF). The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0. 2010. p. 41. Retrieved 2011-10-31.
2. October 27, 1955 entry in Bernstein's diary, Зигзаги памяти. Bernstein transcribed the words as рънка, чендо.