Yery

Yery, Yeru, Ery or Eru (Ы ы; italics: Ы ы), usually called Ы [ɨ] in modern Russian or еры yerý historically and in modern Church Slavonic, is a letter in the Cyrillic script. It represents the phoneme /ɨ/ (more rear or upper than i) after non-palatalised (hard) consonants in the Belarusian and Russian alphabets.

Cyrillic letter Yery
Phonetic usage:	[ɨ]
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 Ѹ 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

The letter is usually romanised into English and most other West European languages as ⟨y⟩: Krylov (family name, Крылов). However, Latin ⟨y⟩ may be used for other purposes as well (such as for ⟨й⟩, or as part of digraphs, e.g. ⟨я⟩). That spelling matches Polish, which uses ⟨y⟩ to represent a very similar sound. Russian ⟨ы⟩ is used to transliterate Polish ⟨y⟩ into Cyrillic: Maryla (Марыля).

Origin

The letter Yery in several fonts

Like many other Cyrillic letters, it was originally from a ligature ꙑ (which is represented in Unicode as Yeru with Back Yer), formed from Yer ⟨ъ⟩ and ⟨і⟩ (formerly written either dotless or with two dots) or Izhe (⟨и⟩ which formerly resembled ⟨н⟩). In mediaeval manuscripts, it is almost always found as ⟨ъі⟩ or ⟨ъи⟩. Once the letters ⟨ъ⟩ and ⟨ь⟩ later lost their values as vowels in the Slavic languages, the current simplified form ⟨ы⟩ evolved.

Usage

The soft sign (Ь) has the same trill. Because of phonological processes, the actual realisation of /i/ after alveolar consonants (⟨д⟩, ⟨з⟩, ⟨л⟩, ⟨н⟩, ⟨р⟩, ⟨с⟩, ⟨т⟩, or ⟨ц⟩) is retracted to a close central unrounded vowel [ɯ] or [ʷɨ], after labials: ⟨б⟩, ⟨в⟩, ⟨м⟩, ⟨п⟩.

In Rusyn, it denotes a sound a bit harder than [ɨ] and close to the Romanian sound î, also written â. In some situations, it may occur after palatalised consonants (синьый "blue", which never happens in Russian), and it often follows ⟨к⟩, ⟨г⟩, ⟨ґ⟩ and ⟨х⟩.

While vowel letters in the Cyrillic alphabet may be divided into iotated and non-iotated pairs (for example, ⟨а⟩ and ⟨я⟩ both represent /a/, the latter denoting a preceding palatalised consonant), ⟨ы⟩ is more complicated. It appears only after hard consonants, its phonetic value differs from ⟨и⟩, and there is some scholarly disagreement as to whether or not ⟨ы⟩ and ⟨и⟩ denote different phonemes.

Native Russian words do not begin with ⟨ы⟩ (except for the specific verb ыкать: "to say the ⟨ы⟩-sound"), but there are many proper and common nouns of non-Russian origin (including some geographical names in Russia) beginning with it: Kim Jong-un (Ким Чен Ын) and Eulji Mundeok (Ыльчи Мундок), a Korean military leader; and Ytyk-Kyuyol (Ытык-Кюёль), Ygyatta (Ыгыатта), a village and a river in Sakha (Yakutia) Republic respectively.

In the Ukrainian alphabet, yery is not used as the language lacks the sound /ɨ/.[1] In the Ukrainian alphabet, yery was mixed with [i] and was phased out in the second half of the 19th century.[2] According to Ukrainian academician Hryhoriy Pivtorak, the letter was replaced with so called "Cyrillic i" ⟨и⟩ which in Ukrainian language pronounced as [ɪ] and appeared due to the merger of letters ⟨ы⟩ and ⟨i⟩ ("Cyrillic dotted i").[1] The yery letter could be found in several earlier versions of Ukrainian writing system that were introduced in the 19th century among which are "Pavlovsky writing system", "Slobda Ukraine (New) writing system", "Yaryzhka", and others.[3]

The letter ⟨ы⟩ is also used in Cyrillic-based alphabets of several Turkic and Mongolic languages (see the list) for a darker vowel [ɯ]. The corresponding letter in Latin-based scripts are ⟨ı⟩ (dotless I), I with bowl, and the soft sign (Ь ь)

In Tuvan, the Cyrillic letter can be written as a double vowel.[4][5]

Related letters and other similar characters

• Ь ь : Cyrillic letter Soft sign
• И и : Cyrillic letter I
• Ъ ъ : Cyrillic letter Yer
• I ı : Latin letter Dotless I
• Ư ư : Latin letter U with horn, the 26th letter of the Vietnamese alphabet.

Computing codes

Character information

Preview	Ы		ы		Ꙑ		ꙑ
Unicode name	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YERU		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YERU		CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YERU WITH BACK YER		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YERU WITH BACK YER
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	1067	U+042B	1099	U+044B	42576	U+A650	42577	U+A651
UTF-8	208 171	D0 AB	209 139	D1 8B	234 153 144	EA 99 90	234 153 145	EA 99 91
Numeric character reference	Ы	Ы	ы	ы	Ꙑ	Ꙑ	ꙑ	ꙑ
Named character reference	Ы		ы
KOI8-R and KOI8-U	249	F9	217	D9
Code page 855	242	F2	241	F1
Code page 866	155	9B	235	EB
Windows-1251	219	DB	251	FB
ISO-8859-5	203	CB	235	EB
Macintosh Cyrillic	155	9B	251	FB

References

1. 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
2. Hlushchenko, V. Yer, yery (ЄР, ЄРИ). Ukrainian Language. Encyclopedia (Izbornik).
3. Hryhoriy Pivtorak. Orthography (ПРАВОПИС). Izbornik.
4. "Tuvan language, alphabet and pronunciation". omniglot.com. Retrieved 14 June 2016.
5. Campbell, George L.; King, Gareth (24 July 2013). "Compendium of the World's Languages". Routledge. Retrieved 14 June 2016 – via Google Books.

• Russian: An interactive online reference grammar, by Dr Robert Beard

External links

• The dictionary definition of Ы at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of ы at Wiktionary