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| Cyrillic letter Yo | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
||||||
| Unicode (hex) | ||||||
| majuscule: U+0401 | ||||||
| minuscule: U+0451 | ||||||
| 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 | ||||||
Yo (Ё, ё),a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. In Belarusian it is the seventh letter of the alphabet and in Rusyn the ninth. Its status in Russian, the language in which it was first used, is ambiguous: although it indicates a distinct sound from е, it is treated as the same letter for purposes of alphabetisation and sorting (thus in the dictionary ёж comes after едок and before ездить), and in most circumstances it is printed as е. It is not used in the other Slavonic languages. It does however occur (as a discrete character) in the Cyrillic alphabets used by Mongolian and many Caucasian and Turkic languages.
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The letter "Ё" in Russian
In Russian, the letter ё indicates the phoneme /o/ following a palatalized consonant (or occasionally after ж, ч, ш or щ) in a stressed syllable. In initial or post-vocalic position is represents /jo/, also exclusively under stress.
In modern Russian, the reflex of Common Slavonic /e/ under stress and following a palatalized consonant but not preceding a palatalized consonant is /o/. (Compare, for example, Russian моё (my—neuter nominative and accusative singular) and Polish/Czech/Slovak moje, etc.) However, since this sound change took place after the introduction of writing, the letter е continued to be written in this position. It was not until the eighteenth century that efforts were made to represent the sound in writing. From the mid-1730s it appears sporadically as іо or і͡о, a letter-combination which was officially adopted on 18th November 1783 at a session of the Russian Academy under the presidency of Princess Dashkova, and it was used in the Academy Dictionary (1789-94), but never gained great popularity. The letter ё was first used in print in 1795 by the poet Ivan Dmitriev, and was soon taken up by such influential writers as Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin and Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin, which assured its acceptance in the literary norm.1
It should be noted that the diacritic ¨ does not appear above any other letter in Russian, nor does it serve any purpose except to differentiate between е and ё.
Except for a brief period after World War II, the use of ё was never obligatory in standard Russian orthography. By and large it is only used in pedagogical literature intended for children and foreign language learners, and in dictionaries. Otherwise е is used, and ё occurs only when it is necessary to avoid ambiguity (for example, to distinguish between все and всё when it is not obvious from the context which is meant) or in words (principally proper names) the pronunciation of which may not be familiar to the reader. It is however perfectly permissible under the current standard to mark ё whenever it occurs, and this is the preference of some Russian authors and periodicals.
The fact that ё is frequently replaced with е in print often causes some confusion to both Russians and non-Russians, as it makes Russian words and names harder to transcribe accurately. One recurring problem is with Russian surnames, as both -ев (-ev) and -ёв (-yov) are common endings. Thus the English-speaking world knows two leaders of the former Soviet Union as Khrushchev and Gorbachev though their surnames end in Russian with -ёв, better transcribed -yov. Some words and names have also changed in Russian because of the confusion — some have had their ‘ё’ replaced with ‘е’, and some ‘е’ replaced with ‘ё’. For example, the Russian word for furniture, мебель, was evidently originally мёбель, as it comes from German Möbel.
"Ё" in transcription of foreign words
Ё can be used in Russian transcription of foreign words originating from languages that use the umlaut ö/ő/ø (German, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, Faroese, Finnish, Hungarian), such as Gerhard Schröder, whose last name is transliterated as Шpёдep (-ьo in Bulgarian). This letter is also often used for transcribing the vowel of English names such as Burns (as in Роберт Бёрнс for Robert Burns) or Hearst/Hurst/Hirst (Хёрст).
The letter Ё is normally used to transcribe the Japanese "よ" into Russian Cyrillic, appearing in the Russian transcription of the Japanese syllables that would appear as yo (よ), kyo (きょ), sho (しょ) etc. in Hepburn Romanization. There are a few exceptions: for example, Yokohama is spelled in Russian with "Йо", not "Ё". Similarly, "ё" is used to transcribe into Russian Cyrillic the Korean sounds romanized as yo. However, the letter Ё is not used in the Russian transcription of the Chinese language, as the syllable that is spelled you in pinyin is represented by "ю" in the standard Russian transcription, and yao is "яо".
However, the sound /jo/ in names from European languages is normally transcribed into Russian as "йо" in initial and post-vocalic position, and ьo after consonants, e.g. Нью-Йорк "New York" батальон batallion.
Ё in other East Slavic languages
In Belarusian and in Rusyn it is incorrect to replace "ё" with "е".
Ё in Dungan language
Unlike the Russian spelling system, "Ё" is not optional in the Cyrillic alphabet used by the Dungan language. In that Sinitic language, the "Ё"/"Е" distinction is crucial, as the former is used to e.g. write the syllable that would have the pinyin spelling of yao in the Standard Chinese, while the latter is used for the syllable that appears as ye in pinyin. "Ё" is very prominent in Dungan spelling, since the very common syllable that appears as yang in pinyin is spellt "ён" in Dungan.
See also
- Э, э - E (Cyrillic)
- Ë - Ë (Latin latter)
- О, о - O (Cyrillic)
- Ε, ε - Epsilon (Greek letter)
- E, e - (Latin letter)
References
- ^ Е. В. Пчелов, "Буква ё в русской азбуке и письменности",Палеография и кодикология: 300 лет после Монфокона. Материалы (Ред. М. В. Бибиков и др.), Москва, 2008: стр.139-148
External links
- Kevin O'Flynn. "Town To Honor Forgotten Letter". The St. Petersburg Times.
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 11 November 2008, at 21:25.
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