Yery

Cyrillic letter Yery
The Cyrillic script
Slavic letters
А Б В Г Ґ Д Ђ Ѓ Е Ѐ Ё Є Ж З З́ Ѕ И Ѝ І Ї Й Ј К Л Љ М Н Њ О П Р С С́ Т Ћ Ќ У Ў Ф Х Ц Ч Џ Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я
Non-Slavic letters
Ӑ А̄ А̊ А̃ Ӓ Ӓ̄ Ә Ә́ Ә̃ Ӛ Ӕ Ғ Г̧ Г̑ Г̄ Ҕ Ӻ Ӷ Ԁ Ԃ Ꚃ Ꚁ Ꚉ Ԫ Ԭ Ӗ Е̄ Е̃ Ё̄ Є̈ Ӂ Җ Ꚅ Ӝ Ԅ Ҙ Ӟ Ԑ Ԑ̈ Ӡ Ԇ Ӣ И̃ Ҋ Ӥ Қ Ӄ Ҡ Ҟ Ҝ Ԟ Ԛ Ӆ Ԯ Ԓ Ԡ Ԉ Ԕ Ӎ Ӊ Ң Ԩ Ӈ Ҥ Ԣ Ԋ О̆ О̃ О̄ Ӧ Ө Ө̄ Ӫ Ҩ Ԥ Ҧ Р̌ Ҏ Ԗ Ҫ Ԍ Ꚑ Ҭ Ꚋ Ꚍ Ԏ У̃ Ӯ Ӱ Ӱ́ Ӳ Ү Ү́ Ұ Х̑ Ҳ Ӽ Ӿ Һ Һ̈ Ԧ Ꚕ Ҵ Ꚏ Ҷ Ӵ Ӌ Ҹ Ꚓ Ꚗ Ꚇ Ҽ Ҿ Ы̆ Ы̄ Ӹ Ҍ Э̆ Э̄ Э̇ Ӭ Ӭ́ Ӭ̄ Ю̆ Ю̈ Ю̈́ Ю̄ Я̆ Я̄ Я̈ Ԙ Ԝ Ӏ
Archaic letters
Ꙁ Ꙃ Ꙅ Ꙇ Ꙉ Ҁ Ѻ ОУ Ꙋ Ѡ Ѽ Ꙍ Ѿ Ꙏ Ѣ Ꙑ Ꙓ Ꙕ Ꙗ Ѥ Ѧ Ꙙ Ѫ Ꙛ Ѩ Ꙝ Ѭ Ѯ Ѱ Ѳ Ѵ Ѷ Ꙟ Ꙡ Ꙣ Ꙥ Ꙧ Ꙩ Ꙫ Ꙭ ꙮ Ꚙ Ꚛ
List of Cyrillic letters Cyrillic digraphs

Yery, Yeru, Ery or Eru (Ы, ы, usually called "Ы" [ɨ] in modern Russian or "еры" yerý historically and in modern Church Slavonic) is a letter in the Cyrillic script. It represents the phoneme /i/ after non-palatalised (hard) consonants in the Belarusian and Russian alphabets.

Because of phonological processes, the actual realisation of /i/ after alveolar consonants (⟨д⟩, ⟨з⟩, ⟨л⟩, ⟨н⟩, ⟨р⟩, ⟨с⟩, ⟨т⟩, or ⟨ц⟩) is retracted to a close central unrounded vowel [ɨ] or [ʷi], after labials: ⟨б⟩, ⟨в⟩, ⟨м⟩, ⟨п⟩.

In Rusyn, it denotes a sound a bit harder than [ɨ] and close to the Romanian sound î, also written â. In some situations, it may occur after palatalised consonants (синьый "blue", which never happens in Russian), and it often follows ⟨к⟩, ⟨г⟩, ⟨ґ⟩ and ⟨х⟩.

While vowel letters in the Cyrillic alphabet may be divided into iotated and non-iotated pairs (for example, ⟨а⟩ and ⟨я⟩ both represent /a/, the latter denoting a preceding palatalised consonant), ⟨ы⟩ is more complicated. 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 other Cyrillic letters, it was originally from a ligature: ꙑ, formed from Yer ⟨ъ⟩ and ⟨і⟩ (formerly written either dotless or with two dots) or Izhe (⟨и⟩ whose former form resembled ⟨н⟩). In mediaeval manuscripts, it is almost always found as ⟨ъі⟩ or ⟨ъи⟩. Once the letters ⟨ъ⟩ and ⟨ь⟩ later lost their values as vowels in the Slavic languages, the current simplified form ⟨ы⟩ evolved.

The letter Yery in several fonts

The letter is usually romanised into English and most other West European languages as ⟨y⟩: Krylov (family name, Крылов). However, ⟨y⟩ may be used for other purposes as well (such as in digraphs). That spelling matches Polish, which uses ⟨y⟩ to represent the same sound. Russian ⟨ы⟩ is used to transliterate Polish ⟨y⟩ into Cyrillic: Maryla – Марыля.

Native Russian words do not begin with ⟨ы⟩ (except for the specific verb ыкать, "to say the ⟨ы⟩-sound″), but many proper and common nouns of non-Russian origin (including some geographical names in Russia) beginning with the letter exist: 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 [ɨ] is denoted by ⟨и⟩, and the letter ⟨ы⟩ is not used in Ukrainian. Ukrainian ⟨и⟩ usually is transcribed in Russian as ⟨ы⟩.

The letter ⟨ы⟩ is also used in Cyrillic-based alphabets of several Turkic and Mongolic languages (see the list) and denotes a darker vowel [ɯ]. Corresponding letter in Latin-based scripts is ⟨б⟩ (dotless I).

Related letters and other similar characters

• Ь ь : Cyrillic letter Soft sign
• І і : Cyrillic letter Dotted I
• И и : Cyrillic letter I
• Ъ ъ : Cyrillic letter Yer

Computing codes

Character	Ы		ы		Ꙑ		ꙑ
Unicode name	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YERU		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YERU		CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YERU WITH BACK YER		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YERU WITH BACK YER
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	1067	U+042B	1099	U+044B	42576	U+A650	42577	U+A651
UTF-8	208 171	D0 AB	209 139	D1 8B	234 153 144	EA 99 90	234 153 145	EA 99 91
Numeric character reference	Ы	Ы	ы	ы	Ꙑ	Ꙑ	ꙑ	ꙑ
KOI8-R and KOI8-U	249	F9	217	D9
Code page 855	242	F2	241	F1
Code page 866	155	9B	235	EB
Windows-1251	219	DB	251	FB
ISO-8859-5	203	CB	235	EB
Macintosh Cyrillic	155	9B	251	FB

References

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

External links

• The dictionary definition of Ы at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of ы at Wiktionary