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Cyrillic letter Ya
Cyrillic alphabet
А	Б	В	Г	Ґ	Д	Ђ
Ѓ	Е	Ѐ	Ё	Є	Ж	З
Ѕ	И	Ѝ	І	Ї	Й	Ј
К	Л	Љ	М	Н	Њ	О
П	Р	С	Т	Ћ	Ќ	У
Ў	Ф	Х	Ц	Ч	Џ	Ш
Щ	Ъ	Ы	Ь	Э	Ю	Я
Non-Slavic letters
Ӑ	Ӓ	Ә	Ӛ	Ӕ	Ғ	Ҕ
Ӻ	Ӷ	Ԁ	Ԃ	Ӗ	Ӂ	Җ
Ӝ	Ԅ	Ҙ	Ӟ	Ԑ	Ӡ	Ԇ
Ӣ	Ҋ	Ӥ	Қ	Ӄ	Ҡ	Ҟ
Ҝ	Ԟ	Ԛ	Ӆ	Ԓ	Ԡ	Ԉ
Ԕ	Ӎ	Ӊ	Ң	Ӈ	Ҥ	Ԣ
Ԋ	Ӧ	Ө	Ӫ	Ҩ	Ҧ	Ҏ
Ԗ	Ҫ	Ԍ	Ҭ	Ԏ	Ӯ	Ӱ
Ӳ	Ү	Ұ	Ҳ	Ӽ	Ӿ	Һ
Ҵ	Ҷ	Ӵ	Ӌ	Ҹ	Ҽ	Ҿ
Ӹ	Ҍ	Ӭ	Ԙ	Ԝ	Ӏ
Archaic letters
Ҁ	Ѻ	ОУ	Ѡ	Ѣ	Ꙗ	Ѥ
Ѧ	Ѫ	Ѩ	Ѭ	Ѯ	Ѱ	Ѳ
Ѵ	Ꙟ
List of Cyrillic letters
Cyrillic digraphs

Ya (Я, я) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet, representing either the combination /ja/ (a so-called iotated vowel) or /a/ after a palatalized consonant.

History

Little Yus

Я is actually a hybrid of two historic letters. One is iotified a (Ꙗ, ꙗ) a ligature of Decimal I and A, similar to letters like Yu (Ю) or Iotified E (Ѥ). The other is Little Yus (Ѧ) and the Iotified Yat. In East Slavic (including Russian), the phonetic distinction between IA ([ja]) and Ѧ (a front nasal vowel /ɛ̃/ in Old Church Slavonic) was lost, so that in many East Slavic texts written in the Cyrillic cursive script (Skoropis), a variant of the letter Ѧ without the middle leg (Ꙙ, ꙙ) was used to indicate [ja].

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

When Peter I introduced his "civil script" in 1708, he had this round form of Ѧ adapted to the roman style of the Western European Latin alphabet, which resulted in the form of a backwards Latin R.

Consequently, this new "Я" has no counterpart in the Glagolitic, Greek or Latin alphabets, no numerical value, and no name other than "Ya".

Code positions

Я is encoded as follows:

Its HTML entity is Я or Я for capital and я or я for small letter.

In versions of Unicode up to and including 5.0, А iotified shared codepoints with Я, the actual glyph being dependent upon the font. However, with effect from version 5.1, Unicode provides the following dedicated codepoints for А iotified: hexadecimal A656 (capital), A657 (small).

Puns based on this letter

Я is the thirty-third and last letter of the Russian alphabet. In Russian, the word ya (я) is the personal pronoun 'I'. A popular saying based on this fact, "Ya (= I) is the last letter in the alphabet", is used to teach children modesty and humility. In Early Cyrillic alphabet the name az (азъ) of the first letter а stood for 'I'. In the Bulgarian language az (аз) means 'I', and ya is used in sentences to express surprise. In some Bulgarian dialects я is used instead of az (аз) but this is considered provincial or rural.

The Cyrillic letters Я and И are used in faux Cyrillic typography.

See also

• Iotification

A Iotified, both capital and lowercase forms (variant).

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 4 November 2008, at 23:48.

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