Yat

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Cyrillic letter Yat
Cyrillic alphabet
А	Б	В	Г	Ґ	Ѓ	Д
Ђ	Е	Ѐ	Ё	Є	Ж	З
Ѕ	И	Ѝ	І	Ї	Й	Ј
К	Ќ	Л	Љ	М	Н	Њ
О	П	Р	С	Т	Ћ	У
Ў	Ф	Х	Ц	Ч	Џ	Ш
Щ	Ъ	Ы	Ь	Э	Ю	Я
Non-Slavic letters
Ӑ	Ӓ	Ә	Ӛ	Ӕ	Ҕ	Ӗ
Ғ	Ӷ	Ӏ	Ӂ	Җ	Ӝ	Ҙ
Ӟ	Ӡ	Ӣ	Ӥ	Ҋ	Ҡ	Қ
Ҟ	Ҝ	Ӄ	Ӆ	Ӎ	Ң	Ҥ
Ӊ	Ӈ	Ө	Ӫ	Ӧ	Ҧ	Ҏ
Ҫ	Ҷ	Ҹ	Ӵ	Ҽ	Ҿ	Ӌ
Ҩ	Ҳ	Һ	Ҭ	Ҵ	Ӳ	Ӯ
Ү	Ұ	Ӱ	Ӹ	Ҍ	Ӭ
Archaic letters
Ҁ	Ѹ	Ѡ	Ѿ	Ѻ	Ѣ	ІА
Ѥ	Ѧ	Ѫ	Ѩ	Ѭ	Ѯ	Ѱ
Ѳ	Ѵ	Ѷ

Yat or Jat (Ѣ, ѣ) is the thirty-second letter of the old Cyrillic alphabet and name of the sound represented by it. Its name in Old Church Slavonic is yět’ (ѣть) or yat’ (ıать), in Bulgarian yat (ят) or e dvoyno (е двойно, double e), in Russian and Ukrainian yat’ (ять), in Serbian yat (jat, јат, Croatian spelling jat). In the common scientific Latin transliteration for old Slavic languages, the letter is represented by e with caron: ě (taken from Czech alphabet). In very old Cyrillic tombstones exists a special form of the letter called an "iotated yat".

The yat represented a Common Slavic long vowel. It is generally believed to have represented the sound [æ:], which was a reflex of earlier [e:], [oj], or [aj]. That the sound represented by yat developed late in the history of Common Slavonic is indicated by its role in the second palatalization of the Slavonic velars. It is significant that from the earliest texts, there is considerable confusion between the yat and the Cyrillic iotified a (ıа). One explanation is that the dialect of Thessaloniki, on which the Old Church Slavonic literary language was based, and other South Slavonic dialects shifted from /æ:/ to /ja/ independent from the Northern and Western branches. The confusion was also possibly aggravated by the fact that Cyrillic Little Yus (Ѧ) looks very similar to the older Glagolitic alphabet's yat (Ⱑ, supported only in Unicode 4.1; here's an image: ).

Cyrillic letter yat, set in several fonts. Note that in cursive writing, the small yat has quite different shape.

In various modern Slavic languages the yat has reflexed into various vowels. For example, the old Slavic root běl (white) became bel /bʲel/ in Standard Russian (dialectal /bʲal/, /bʲijel/ or even /bʲil/ in some regions), bil /bʲil/ in Ukrainian, bjal in Bulgarian, biel / biały in Polish, and bílý in Czech. Older, unrelated reflexes of yat exist; for example, old word телѣгы (telěgi, carts) became modern Russian телеги (telegi) but in Serbian it is таљиге (taljige).

As a result of these reflexes, yat no longer represented an independent phoneme, but rather one identical to that represented by another Cyrillic letter. As a result, children had to memorise by rote where to write yat and where not. Therefore, the letter was dropped in a series of orthographic reforms: in Serbian with the reform of Vuk Karadžić, which was later adopted for Macedonian, in Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian roughly with the October revolution, and in Bulgarian as late as 1945. The letter is no longer used in the standard modern orthography of any of the Slavic languages written with the Cyrillic alphabet, although it survives in liturgical and church texts written in the Russian recension of Church Slavonic and has, since 1991, found some favour in advertising.

[edit] Yat in Russia and Ukraine

In the Russian language, confusion between the yat and e in writing occurs from the earliest records, but when exactly the final disappearance of the original sound from all dialects took place is a topic of scientific debate. Some scholars, for example W.K. Matthews, have placed the coalescence of the two sounds at the earliest historical phases (eleventh century or earlier), attributing its use until 1918 to Church Slavonic influence. Within Russia itself, however, a consensus has found its way into university textbooks of historical grammar (e.g., V.V. Ivanov), that, taking all the dialects into account, the sounds remained predominantly distinct until the eighteenth century, at least under stress, and are distinct to this day in some localities. It may be noteworthy in this respect that the yat in Ukrainian usually merged in sound with i, and therefore has remained distinct from e.

The story of the letter yat and its elimination from the Russian alphabet makes for an interesting footnote in Russian cultural history; see Reforms of Russian orthography. A full list of words that were written with the letter yat at the beginning of twentieth century can be found in the Russian Wikipedia.

[edit] Yat in Serbo-Croatian

In the central South Slavic group, yat has morphed into three distinct forms: e, (i)je and i, and this has become one of the differentiating criteria between the dialects; see Rendering of yat in Serbo-Croatian for details.

[edit] Yat in Bulgarian

Yat border

In Bulgarian, the different reflexes of the yat form the so-called yat border (yatova granitsa), running approximately from Nikopol on the Danube to Solun (Thessaloniki) on the Aegean Sea. The yat border is the most important Bulgarian isogloss, marking pronunciation of the old yat as either /a/ and soft consonant before it (represented by я in standard Bulgarian) or /e/ to the east (bjal, but plural beli, бял – бели) and only as e (bel – beli, бел – бели) to the west, continuing in Macedonian and Serbian dialects.

The elimination of the yat from the Bulgarian alphabet in 1945 was seen by many Bulgarian Macedonians as “a betrayal of the western dialects” and an artificial separation of Bulgarian from the Macedonian dialects. After 1989 many right wing political and cultural organisations like the Bulgarian National Radical Party and the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (VMRO) in Bulgaria tried to initiate a debate on orthographic reform and reintroduction of the yat.

[edit] Yat in Rusyn

In the Rusyn language, yat was used until 1945, and removed during the Soviet occupation. Nowadays some Rusyn writers and poets try to reinstate it, but this initiative isn't really popular among Rusyn intelligentsia.

[edit] Code positions

Yat is present in Unicode, though it is often absent from commonly available fonts. If your browser handles correctly Unicode, and has a font which includes the letter, you should see the capital and small yats here: Ѣѣ.

Its HTML Entities are Ѣ or Ѣ for the capital and ѣ or ѣ for the small letter.

[edit] See also

• Yus
• Ҍ (Semisoft sign)