Ь
The Ь ( lowercase ь ; Russian мягкий знак mjagki snak ; Ukrainian знак м'якшення snak mjakschennja "soft sign", Bulgarian ер малък he Malak "small It"; originally called "Jer") is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet . He is primarily known under the name of soft sign , Erweichungszeichen or soft characters , which is a translation of the Russian name. The function and meaning of the ь depends on regional and temporal aspects.
Older language levels
In the pre-Slavic and Old Church Slavonic is ь , Glagolitic 
, for a front reduced vowel corresponding to a short over [ i ] corresponds. It was only in the post-Ur-Slavic period - also in today's individual Slavic languages - that the reduced vowels ь and ъ (lower back vowel) were either fully voweled or they disappeared.
As a rule of thumb, it can be said that the odd reduced vowels of an ancient Slavic word counted from behind always disappeared; the straight lines, on the other hand, were in a strong position and were fully vocalized, with the results being different in today's Slavic languages.
Example: Original Slavic * otьcь ( otisi ) "father", genitive * otьca ( otisa ).
In the nominative there are two reduced vowels, of which the one between t and c is the second from the back, i.e. is in a strong position and is fully vocalized. Therefore, in today's Russian we find the nominative form отец ( otets ), i.e. the full vocalization * ь> e, in Croatian, however, otac ( otats ), i.e. the full vocalization * ь> a. The genitive form shows only a single reduced vowel, which is accordingly the first from behind, stands in a weak position and disappears. Therefore, the genitive of this word in Russian is not * отеца ( otetsa ), but отца ( otsa ).
Usage today
Due to the disappearance or the full vocalization, ь no longer stands for a vowel, but is an orthographic symbol of the Belarusian , Bulgarian, Russian and Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet. It signals the palatalization of the preceding consonant and can therefore only be placed after consonants . In Serbian and Macedonian it is not used as an independent letter, but only as a ligature with Л and Н ( Љ , Њ ). In Bulgarian it can only appear before о (ьо, e.g. in синьо sinjo 'blue').
Character encoding
| default | Uppercase Ь | Minuscule ь | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode | Codepoint | U + 042C | U + 044C |
| Surname | CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SOFT SIGN | CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SOFT SIGN | |
| UTF-8 | D0 AC | D1 8C | |
| XML / XHTML | decimal |
Ь
|
ь
|
| hexadecimal |
Ь
|
ь
|
|