Ya (Cyrillic)

Ya or Ja я; italics: Я я) is a letter of the Cyrillic script, the civil script variant of Old Cyrillic Little Yus (Ѧ ѧ). Among modern Slavic languages, it is used in East Slavic and Bulgarian languages. It is also used in the Cyrillic alphabets used by Mongolian and many Uralic, Caucasian and Turkic languages of the former Soviet Union.

Cyrillic letter Ya
Phonetic usage:[ja]
The Cyrillic script
Slavic letters
АБВГҐДЂ
ЃЕЀЁЄЖЗ
З́ЅИЍЙІЇ
ЈКЛЉМНЊ
ОŌПРСС́Т
ЋЌУӮЎФХ
ЦЧЏШЩЪЫ
ЬЭЮЯ
Non-Slavic letters
А́А̀ӐА̄А̊А̃Ӓ
Ӓ̄ӔӘӘ́Ә̃ӚВ̌
ҒГ̧Г̑Г̄Г̣Г̌Ҕ
ӺҒ̌ӶԀԂ
Д̆Д̣ԪԬД̆Ӗ
Е̄Е̃Ё̄Є̈ӁҖӜ
ԄҘӞЗ̌З̱З̣Ԑ
Ԑ̈ӠԆӢИ̃ҊӤ
И́ҚӃҠҞҜК̣
ԚӅԮԒԈӍӉ
ҢԨӇҤԊО́О̀
О̆О̂О̃ӦӦ̄ӨӨ̄
Ө́Ө̆ӪҨԤҦР̌
ҎԖҪС̣С̱Т̌Т̣
ҬԎУ̃Ӱ
Ӱ́ӲҮҮ́ҰХ̣Х̱
Х̮Х̑ҲӼӾҺҺ̈
ԦҴҶӴӋҸҼ
ҾЫ̆Ы̄ӸҌЭ̆Э̄
Э̇ӬӬ́Ӭ̄Ю̆Ю̈Ю̈́
Ю̄Я̆Я̄Я̈ԜӀ
Archaic letters
ҀѺ
ОУѠѼѾ
ѢѤѦ
ѪѨѬѮ
ѰѲԌ
ѴѶԘ
ԢԔԠԞ

Pronunciation

It is a so-called iotated vowel and typically sounds as /ja/ in initial or post-vocalic position, something like the English pronunciation of ya in "yard".

When я follows a soft consonant, no /j/ sound occurs between the consonant and the vowel.

Exact pronunciation of the vowel sound of я depends also on the following sound due to allophony in Slavic languages. Before a soft consonant it is [æ], the near-open front unrounded vowel – like in "cat". If a hard consonant follows я, or none, then the result is an open vowel, usually [a] – like in "black".

In non-stressed positions the reduction depends on language and dialect. The standard Russian language reduces this vowel to [ɪ], but in yakanye dialects я does not reduce at all, although other instances of the /a/ phoneme (represented with the letter а) do reduce.

In Bulgarian the vowel sound is reduced to /ɐ/ in unstressed syllables, and is pronounced /ɤ̞/ in stressed verb and definite article endings.

History

Little Yus

The letter ѧ, known as little jus (yus) (Bulgarian: малък юс, Russian: юс малый) originally stood for a front nasal vowel, conventionally transcribed as ę. The history of the letter (in both Church Slavonic and vernacular texts) varies according to the development of this sound in the different areas where Cyrillic was used.

In Serbia, [ę] became [e] at a very early period and the letter ѧ ceased to be used, being replaced by e. In Bulgaria the situation is complicated by the fact that dialects differ and that there were different orthographic systems in use, but broadly speaking [ę] became [e] in most positions, but in some circumstances it merged with [ǫ], particularly in inflexional endings, e.g. the third person plural ending of the present tense of certain verbs such as правѧтъ (Modern Bulgarian правят). The letter continued to be used, but its distribution, particularly in regard to the other jusy, was governed as much by orthographical convention as by phonetic value or etymology.

Among the Eastern Slavs, [ę] was denasalised, probably to [æ], which palatalised the preceding consonant; after palatalisation became phonemic, the /æ/ phoneme merged with /a/, and ѧ henceforth indicated /a/ after a palatalised consonant, or else, in initial or post-vocalic position, /ja/. However, Cyrillic already had a character with this function, namely , so that for the Eastern Slavs these two characters were henceforth equivalent. The alphabet in Meletij Smotrickij's grammar of 1619 accordingly lists "ꙗ и҆лѝ ѧ" ("ꙗ ili ѧ", "ꙗ or ѧ");[1] he explains that is used initially and ѧ elsewhere. (In fact he also distinguishes the feminine form of the accusative plural of the third person pronoun ѧ҆̀ from the masculine and neuter ꙗ҆̀.) This reflects the practice of earlier scribes and was further codified by the Muscovite printers of the seventeenth century (and is continued in modern Church Slavonic). However, in vernacular and informal writing of the period, the two letters may be used completely indiscriminately.

It was in Russian cursive (skoropis') writing of this time that the letter acquired its modern form: the left-hand leg of ѧ was progressively shortened, eventually disappearing altogether, while the foot of the middle leg shifted towards the left, producing the я shape.

A page with the letter forms for [ja] (first line) with Tsar Peter’s choice of Я instead of Ѧ or

In the specimens of the civil script produced for Peter I, forms of ꙗ, ѧ and я were grouped together; Peter removed the first two, leaving only я in the modern alphabet, and its use in Russian remains the same to the present day. It was similarly adopted for the standardised orthographies of modern Ukrainian and Belarusian. In nineteenth-century Bulgaria, both Old Cyrillic and civil scripts were used for printing, with я in the latter corresponding to ѧ in the former, and there were various attempts to standardise the orthography, of which some, such as the Plovdiv school exemplified by Nayden Gerov, were more conservative, essentially preserving the Middle Bulgarian distribution of the letter, others attempted to rationalise spelling on more phonetic principles, and one project in 1893 proposed abolishing the letter я altogether.[2] By the early twentieth century, under Russian influence, я came to be used for /ja/ (which is not a reflex of ę in Bulgarian), retaining its use for /jɐ/ but was no longer used for other purposes; this is its function today.

Use in loanwords and transcriptions

In Russian, the letter has little use in loanwords and orthographic transcriptions of foreign words. A notable exception is the use of ля Russian pronunciation: [lʲa] to transcribe /la/, mostly from Romance languages, German and Arabic. This makes л to match [l] better than its dark l pronunciation in ла. Я is also used to transcribe Romanian ea, pronounced as [e̯a].

Although [æ] is a distinctive pronunciation of я in Russian, the letter is almost never used to transcribe that sound, unlike the use of ю to approximate close front and central rounded vowels. Nonetheless, я is used for Estonian and Finnish ä – for instance, Pärnu is written Пярну in Russian, although the Russian pronunciation does not match the original.

Computing codes

Unicode provides separate code-points for the Old Cyrillic and civil script forms of this letter. A number of Old Cyrillic fonts developed before the publication of Unicode 5.1 placed Iotified A (Ꙗ/ꙗ) at the code points for Ya (Я/я) instead of the Private Use Area,[3] but since Unicode 5.1, Iotified A has been encoded separately from Ya .

Character information
PreviewЯя
Unicode nameCYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YACYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YA
Encodingsdecimalhexdecimalhex
Unicode1071U+042F1103U+044F
UTF-8208 175D0 AF209 143D1 8F
Numeric character referenceЯЯяя
Named character referenceЯя
KOI8-R and KOI8-U241F1209D1
Code page 855224E0222DE
Code page 8661599F239EF
Windows-1251223DF255FF
ISO-8859-5207CF239EF
Macintosh Cyrillic1599F223DF

See also

References

  1. Грамматіки Славе́нскиѧ пра́вилное Сѵ́нтаґма, Jevje, 1619, sign.Аг҃
  2. Любомир Андрейчин, Из историята на нашето езиково строителство, София, 1977, pp.151–165
  3. According to the Unicode FAQ “characters that are not yet in the standard need to be represented by codepoints in the Private Use Area”
  • The dictionary definition of Я at Wiktionary
  • The dictionary definition of я at Wiktionary
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