Yery

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Cyrillic letter

title: "Yery" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["cyrillic-ligatures"] description: "Cyrillic letter" topic_path: "general/cyrillic-ligatures" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yery" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Cyrillic letter ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox grapheme"]

Field	Value
script	Cyrillic
type	Alphabet
typedesc	ic
name	Yery
image	Cyrillic letter Yery - uppercase and lowercase.svg
phonemes	[]
[]
[]
[]
equivalents	Y y
letter	Ы ы
language	Old Church Slavonic
unicode	U+042B, U+044B, U+A650, U+A651
variations	Ꙑ ꙑ
::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Karion_Istomin's_alphabet_Yery.jpg" caption="''Yery'', from [[Karion Istomin]]'s 1694 [[alphabet book"] ::

Yeru or Eru (Ы ы; italics: Ы ы or Ы ы; italics: Ы ы), usually called Y in modern Russian or Yery or Ery historically and in modern Church Slavonic, is a letter in the Cyrillic script. It represents the close central unrounded vowel (more rear or upper than i) after non-palatalised (hard) consonants in the Belarusian and Russian alphabets.

The letter is usually romanised , such that the family name Крылов is usually written Krylov in English and most other West European languages. That spelling matches the Latin alphabet used for Polish, whose letter represents the same sound. Similarly, is used for in the cyrillisation of Polish, such that the name Maryla appears as Марыля in Russian. Note, however, that the letter also appears in romanisation of other Russian letters both in isolation (such as , ) and as part of digraphs (such as , ).

In Rusyn, represents the close-mid back unrounded vowel . In most Turkic languages that use Cyrillic, such as Kazakh and Kyrgyz, is used to represent the close back unrounded vowel /ɯ/ instead.

Origin

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Yeri.png" caption="The letter Yery in several fonts"] ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/29-Russian_alphabet-ы.svg" caption="Cursive Yery"] ::

Like many other Cyrillic letters, it was originally from a ligature (which is represented in Unicode as Yeru with Back Yer), formed from Yer and Dotted I (formerly written either dotless or with two dots) or Izhe ( which formerly resembled ). In Medieval manuscripts, it is almost always found as or . The modern form first occurred in South Slavic manuscripts following the loss of palatalization of word-final and preconsonantal consonants, so the letters and became confused; since the end of the 14th century, came to be used in East Slavic manuscripts.

Usage

While vowel letters in the Cyrillic alphabet may be divided into iotated and non-iotated pairs (for example, and both represent , the latter denoting a preceding palatalised consonant), is more complicated. It appears only after hard consonants, its phonetic value differs from , and there is some scholarly disagreement as to whether or not and denote different phonemes.

In Russian

There are no native Russian words that begin with (except for the specific verb ыкать: "to say the -sound"), but there are many proper and common nouns of non-Russian origin (including some geographical names in Russia) that begin with it: Kim Jong-un (Ким Чен Ын) and Ŭlchi Mundŏk (Ыльчи Мундок), a Korean military leader; and Ytyk-Kyuyol (Ытык-Кюёль), Ygyatta (Ыгыатта), a village and a river in Sakha (Yakutia) Republic respectively.

In Ukrainian

In the Ukrainian alphabet, yery is not used since the language lacks the sound . In the Ukrainian alphabet, yery merged with [i] and was phased out in the second half of the 19th century. According to the Ukrainian academician Hryhoriy Pivtorak, the letter was replaced with so called "Cyrillic i" , which in Ukrainian represents the sound , which appeared by the merger of the earlier sounds [ɨ] and [i]. Ukrainian also had newly developed the sound [i] from various origins, which is represented by ("Cyrillic dotted i").

In Rusyn

In Rusyn, it denotes a sound that is a bit harder than and similar to the Romanian sound î, which is also written â. In some cases, the letter may occur after palatalised consonants (синьый "blue", which never happens in Russian), and it often follows , , and .

In Turkic languages

The letter is also used in Cyrillic-based alphabets of several Turkic and Mongolic languages (see the list) for a darker vowel . The corresponding letter in Latin-based scripts are (dotless I), I with bowl (Ь ь), and (in Turkmen).

In Tuvan, the Cyrillic letter can be written as a double vowel.

In Mongolian

In Mongolian, yery is called (Жаран Нэгийн Ы, "Sixty One Yery"). It is used as a suffix in a lot of words in the Mongolian language. (Кирилл монгол бичгийн дүрэм "Mongolian Cyrillic Alphabet").

Related letters and other similar characters

И и : Cyrillic letter I
Й й : Cyrillic letter Short I
Ъ ъ : Cyrillic letter Yer
Ꙑ ꙑ : Cyrillic letter Yeru with back Yer
Ь ь : Cyrillic letter Soft sign
Ҍ ҍ : Cyrillic letter semisoft sign
Ѣ ѣ : Cyrillic letter yat
I ı : Latin letter Dotless I
Ь ь : Latin letter I with bowl
Ư ư : Latin letter U with horn, the 26th letter of the Vietnamese alphabet.
Y y : Latin letter Y
Ý ý : Latin letter Ý
B b : Latin letter B (lowercase)
L l : Latin letter L (lowercase)

Computing codes

References

Russian: An interactive online reference grammar, by Dr Robert Beard

References

Larysa Pavlenko ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20160207205337/http://shron.chtyvo.org.ua/Pavlenko_Larysa/Istorychna_hramatyka_ukrainskoi_movy.pdf Historical grammar of the Ukrainian language (Історична граматика української мови)]''. The editorial and publishing department of the Volyn National University of Lesia Ukrainka. Lutsk, 2010. pages 47-48
Hlushchenko, V. ''[http://izbornyk.org.ua/ukrmova/um16.htm Yer, yery (ЄР, ЄРИ)]''. Ukrainian Language. Encyclopedia (Izbornik).
Yery could be found in several earlier versions of the Ukrainian writing system that were introduced in the 19th century among which were "Pavlovsky writing system", "Sloboda Ukraine (New) writing system", and "[[Yaryzhka]]".Hryhoriy Pivtorak. ''[http://litopys.org.ua/ukrmova/um77.htm Orthography (ПРАВОПИС)]''. Izbornik.
"Turkmen Language, Writing and Pronunciation".
"Tuvan language, alphabet and pronunciation". omniglot.com.
(24 July 2013). "Compendium of the World's Languages". Routledge.

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