Yer

Common card · No. 465579

A yer is either of two letters in Cyrillic alphabets, ъ (ѥръ, jerŭ) and ь (ѥрь, jerĭ). The Glagolitic alphabet used, as respective counterparts, the letters (Ⱏ) and (Ⱐ). They originally represented phonemically the "ultra-short" vowels in Slavic languages, including Old Church Slavonic. In all modern Slavic languages, they either evolved into various "full" vowels or disappeared, in some cases causing the palatalization of adjacent consonants. The only natural Slavic language that still uses "ъ" as a vowel sign (pronounced /ɤ/) is Bulgarian, but in many cases, it corresponds to an earlier ѫ (big yus), originally pronounced /õ/, used in pre 1945 Bulgarian orthography. Interslavic, while not a natural language, features vowels corresponding to both the front and back yers in its Latin etymological alphabet, with the big yer "ъ" occasionally being used in Cyrillic writing, though not officially endorsed. Many languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet have kept one or more of the yers to...

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