Ъ

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Ъъ

The Ъ ( lowercase letter ъ ) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet . In Bulgarian it is ъ ? / I for the vowel [⁠ ɤ̞O ⁠] ; in Russian the Ъ is called a hard sign ( Russian твёрдый знак ( twjordy snak ), listen ? / i ), is a modifier (cf. German mute H ) and does not stand for an independent sound. Audio file / audio sample Audio file / audio sample

Historically, Ъ developed from the Glagolitic Jer ( tiny).

Older language levels

In Old Church Slavonic are the letters Ъ or tinyfor a rear reduced vowel , which in the pre-Slavic a short over approximately [⁠ ŭ ⁠] corresponded. It was only in the post-Ur-Slavic period - also in today's individual Slavic languages  - that the reduced vowels * ъ and * ь were either fully voweled (in Russian, for example * ъ> o) or they disappeared (see the explanations under Ь ). Only in Bulgarian has the presumed sound value of * ъ been roughly retained.

Bulgarian

In Bulgarian is Ъ the 27th letter of the alphabet and represents the unrounded half-closed back vowel [⁠ ɤ̞ ⁠] . This is typical of the Bulgarian vowel similar to German "Marble According to" [⁠ ə ⁠] (for example, the E in murm e ln ) or of an a-similar sound reduced suffix -er (as in child he ). For native German speakers, it takes getting used to the fact that this letter can appear not only in an unstressed position, but also in a stressed position (for example in въ́здух ? / I [ 'vɤ̞zdux ], German ' Luft ' ) or even at the beginning of the word (only in Word ъ́гъл ? / I [ 'ɤ̞gɐɫ ], German ' angle ' , and words derived from it). Audio file / audio sample Audio file / audio sample

Ъ is usually transcribed with A (example: Александ ъ р ? / I to Aleksand a r or Alexand a r, but not * Alexand e r ). Audio file / audio sample

It should be noted, however, that the Cyrillic А , which is also transcribed to Latin A, has a different sound value in the stressed position; the transcription is therefore ambiguous. In order to maintain this distinction, in the scientific transliteration the Ъ is instead represented with Ă (A with Breve ; not to be confused with the similar looking Hatschek ), alternatively with the specially designated Latin letter -  ʺ  - (the Unicode character U + 02BA). In Romanian, however, the letter Ă stands for the very similar sound [ə], which in Bulgarian is almost allophone to [ɤ̞].

Examples of Bulgarian words with Ъ

  • Ъ
  • зъб - tooth
  • плъх - rat
  • ъгъл - corner, angle
  • възраст - age
  • вълк - wolf
  • възможност - possibility
  • белтък - protein
  • пълно - full
  • въздух - air
  • восък - wax
  • дъб - oak
  • тъп - blunt
  • пън - tree stump
  • звън - ringing
  • бъдеще - future
  • къпя - bathe
  • дънки - jeans
  • телефонът - the phone
  • сандък - chest
  • огън - fire
  • огънят - the fire
  • скъп - expensive
  • пъп - navel
  • пъпеш - sugar melon
  • лък - bow (weapon)
  • ъ, ъ, ъ

Russian

In Russian , Ъ is the 28th letter of the alphabet and is referred to as a hard character ( твёрдый знак tvërdyj znak [ 'tvʲɔr.dɨj znak ]), formerly also ер [ jɛr ] or [ jɔr ], in German often also as a hardness mark .

Until the spelling reform of 1918 , Ъ was mainly used at the end of a word after a consonant, in order to avoid the hard, d. H. to identify the non- palatalized pronunciation of this consonant (while the soft sign Ь denoted the soft, i.e. palatalized, pronunciation). After the letter in this position was deleted without replacement in 1918, since the harsh pronunciation already results from the absence of the soft sign, the only remaining position in which vor still occurs today is the one inside the word at a morphemic fugue between a consonant and a soft Vowel letters ( Я , Е , И , Ё and Ю ). In this position Ъ represents in addition to the respective vocal the volume [⁠ j ⁠] , for example:

The classic interpretation of the function of Ъ, which dates back to the time before the spelling reform, is that it marks the preceding consonant as hard and at the same time makes it clear that the following vowel letter should be spoken separately, i.e. H. as if it were at the beginning of a word (where the soft vowel letters Я, Е, Ё and Ю denote an automatically occurring [j]). Viewed synchronously , Ъ stands for [j] after a consonant in today's Russian orthography.

Since Ъ appears in Russian only in the inside of the word (and earlier also at the end of the word), but never at the beginning of the word, it usually only occurs there as a lowercase letter. The only exceptions are words written entirely in capital letters, for example ВЪЕЗД ‚EINFAHRT ' .

When, in the wake of the October Revolution, the Russian spelling was also reformed and thus Ъ disappeared in almost all positions in which it was previously written, the corresponding letters were erroneously removed in many print shops together with the letters that had actually been completely abolished, so that Words that still contained Ъ in the interior of the word, no letters were left. As a result, texts appeared in which, based on an older handwritten tradition, an apostrophe was placed instead of Ъ.

Stylized Ъ as the Kommersant logo

The national Russian business newspaper Kommersant , which was established after it was closed by the communists in 1917 in 1989 again, used in reference to the old Russian spelling a stylized cursive -Ъ in its logo and uses a single Majuskel -Ъ as an abbreviation for own newspaper , for example in interviews in which the questions are only introduced with “Ъ:”, or in Ъ-Деньги as a short form for the financial magazine Коммерсантъ-Деньги , Kommersant-Geld ” .

Character encoding

default Uppercase Ъ Minuscule ъ
Unicode Codepoint U + 042A U + 044A
Surname CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER HARD SIGN CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER HARD SIGN
UTF-8 D0 AA D1 8A
XML / XHTML decimal Ъ ъ
hexadecimal Ъ ъ