I with bowl

I with bowl
Usage
Writing systemLatin script
TypeAlphabetic
Language of originYañalif
Sound values
Other
Writing directionLeft-to-Right

Latin yeru[1][2] or I with bowl[3] ( , approximated in Unicode with the Cyrillic soft sign ⟨Ь ь⟩) is an additional letter of the Latin alphabet. It was introduced in 1928 into the reformed Yañalif, and later into other alphabets for Soviet minority languages. The letter was created to represent the non-front close unrounded vowel sounds [ɨ] and [ɯ];[4] thus, this letter corresponds to the letter I ı in modern Turkic alphabets,[3] and the letter yery (⟨Ы ы⟩) in Cyrillic.

Usage

The letter was originally included in the Yañalif, and later also in the alphabets of the Kurdish, Abaza, Sami, Ingrian, Kalmyk, Komi, Tsakhur, Azerbaijani, Bashkir and Suret languages, as well as in the draft reform of the Udmurt alphabet. During the project of the Latinization of the Russian language, this letter corresponded to the Cyrillic letter Ы ы. In Kalmyk, however, it represented palatalisation of the preceding consonant, thus corresponding to the Cyrillic homoglyph Ь ь. In Suret (Assyrian), this letter represented the mid central vowel (ə), like in the word ьsra (ten).

In languages and alphabets that used this letter, small capital ⟨ʙ⟩ was often used for the lowercase form of B, so that there would be no confusion between ⟨b⟩ and ⟨ь⟩.

See also

Notes

References

  1. ^ Karl Pentzlin, Ilya Yevlampiev (2008-11-03). "Proposal to encode four Latin letters for Jaꞑalif" (PDF). Retrieved 2017-10-24.
  2. ^ Karl Pentzlin, Ilya Yevlampiev (2010-09-24). "Proposal to encode two Latin letters for Jaꞑalif" (PDF). Retrieved 2017-09-28.
  3. ^ a b Nikita Manulov (2022-05-20). "Proposal to encode Latin capital and small letter I with bowl" (PDF). Retrieved 2022-06-28.
  4. ^ W. K. Matthews (2013). Languages of the USSR. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 71. ISBN 978-1-107-62355-2.