Yery
Yery or Yeru (Ы, ы, usually called "Ы" [ɨ] in modern Russian or "еры" yerý historically) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. It represents the phoneme /i/ after non-palatalized (hard) consonants in the Belarusian, Rusyn and Russian alphabets. Because of phonological processes, the actual realization of /i/ after most consonants (<д, з, л, н, р, с, т, or ц>) is retracted to a close central unrounded vowel [ɨ], or [ʷi] after the labials б, в, м, п.
While vowels in the Cyrillic alphabet may be divided into iotated and non-iotated pairs (e.g. <а> and <я>, both represent /a/ and the latter denotes a preceding palatalized consonant), <ы> is more complicated; while it appears only after hard consonants, its phonetic value differs from <и> and there is some scholarly disagreement as to whether or not <ы> and <и> denote different phonemes.
Like many Cyrillic letters, originally the letter yery was formed from a ligature ꙑ—formed from Yer <ъ> and <і> (formerly written either dotless or with two dots) or Izhe (<и>, whose former letterform resembled н). In medieval manuscripts, it is almost without exception found as <ъі> or <ъи>. Once the letters <ъ> and <ь> subsequently lost their values as vowels in the Slavic languages, the current simplified form <ы> evolved.
The letter is usually Romanized in English and most other West-European languages as <y>, e.g. Krylov (family name, Крылов), although it may be used for other purposes as well (in combinations), this spelling matches Polish where Latin <y> represents the same sound, Russian <ы> is used to transliterate Polish words with <y> into Cyrillic (e.g. Maryla - Марыля).
Native Russian words do not begin with <ы>, but many proper and common nouns of non-Russian origin (including some geographical names in Russia) that begin with this letter do exist, for example Ytyk-Kyuyol (Ытык-Кюёль), Ygyatta (Ыгыатта), a village and a river in Sakha (Yakutia) Republic respectively, or Eulji Mundeok (Ыльчи Мундок), a Korean military leader.
In the Ukrainian alphabet, the sound similar to Russian <ы> is denoted by <и>, and the Russian sound <и> is denoted by <i>.
References
See also
- Operation Y and Other Shurik's Adventures Операция "Ы" и другие приключения Шурика (Soviet movie, comedy). The implication is: words never start with a Yery, nobody will guess what it stands for.
- Close central unrounded vowel
- Ь, ь - Soft sign (Cyrillic)
- Ъ, ъ - Yer or Hard sign (Cyrillic)
- И, и - (Cyrillic) Used as Ы, ы in Ukrianian.