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Little Yus (?, ?) and Big Yus (?, ?), or Jus, are the letters
Letter (alphabet)

A letter is an element in an alphabetic system of writing, such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants. Each letter in the written language is usually associated with one phoneme in the spoken form of the language....
 representing two Common Slavonic
Proto-Slavic language

Proto-Slavic is the proto-language from which Slavic languages later emerged. It was spoken before the seventh century. As with all other proto-languages, no attested writings have been found; the language has been reconstructed by applying the comparative method to all the attested Slavic languages as well as other Indo-European languages....
 nasal vowel
Nasal vowel

A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the Soft palate so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. The term stands in opposition to the term "oral vowel" refers to an ordinary vowel without this nasalisation....
s, in the early Cyrillic
Early Cyrillic alphabet

The old Cyrillic alphabet was a writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the tenth century to write the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language....
 and Glagolitic alphabets. Each can occur in iotified form (?, ?, ?, ?), as a ligature with the letter I. As of Unicode 5.1, the Blended Yus (?, ?), Closed Little Yus (?, ?) and Iotified Closed Little Yus (?, ?) were added.

Phonetically, Little Yus represents a nasalized front vowel, possibly , while Big Yus represents a nasalized back vowel, such as IPA .

Names of the letters do not imply capitalization
Capitalization

Capitalization is writing a word with its first grapheme as a majuscule and the remaining letters in Lower case , in those writing systems which have a letter case....
: both Little and Big Yus exist in majuscule and minuscule variants.

All modern Slavic languages which use the Cyrillic alphabet have lost the nasal vowels, making Yus unnecessary.

Big Yus was a part of the Bulgarian
Bulgarian language

Bulgarian is an Indo-European languages, a member of the Slavic languages linguistic group.Bulgarian demonstrates several linguistic innovations that set it apart from all other Slavic languages except Macedonian language, such as the elimination of grammatical case, the development of a suffixed definite article , the lack of a verb infin...
 alphabet until 1945.






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Little Yus (?, ?) and Big Yus (?, ?), or Jus, are the letters
Letter (alphabet)

A letter is an element in an alphabetic system of writing, such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants. Each letter in the written language is usually associated with one phoneme in the spoken form of the language....
 representing two Common Slavonic
Proto-Slavic language

Proto-Slavic is the proto-language from which Slavic languages later emerged. It was spoken before the seventh century. As with all other proto-languages, no attested writings have been found; the language has been reconstructed by applying the comparative method to all the attested Slavic languages as well as other Indo-European languages....
 nasal vowel
Nasal vowel

A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the Soft palate so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. The term stands in opposition to the term "oral vowel" refers to an ordinary vowel without this nasalisation....
s, in the early Cyrillic
Early Cyrillic alphabet

The old Cyrillic alphabet was a writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the tenth century to write the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language....
 and Glagolitic alphabets. Each can occur in iotified form (?, ?, ?, ?), as a ligature with the letter I. As of Unicode 5.1, the Blended Yus (?, ?), Closed Little Yus (?, ?) and Iotified Closed Little Yus (?, ?) were added.

Yus
Phonetically, Little Yus represents a nasalized front vowel, possibly , while Big Yus represents a nasalized back vowel, such as IPA .

Names of the letters do not imply capitalization
Capitalization

Capitalization is writing a word with its first grapheme as a majuscule and the remaining letters in Lower case , in those writing systems which have a letter case....
: both Little and Big Yus exist in majuscule and minuscule variants.

All modern Slavic languages which use the Cyrillic alphabet have lost the nasal vowels, making Yus unnecessary.

Big Yus was a part of the Bulgarian
Bulgarian language

Bulgarian is an Indo-European languages, a member of the Slavic languages linguistic group.Bulgarian demonstrates several linguistic innovations that set it apart from all other Slavic languages except Macedonian language, such as the elimination of grammatical case, the development of a suffixed definite article , the lack of a verb infin...
 alphabet until 1945. However, the back nasal had disappeared from the language by that point. As a result, there were inconsistencies in its usage since people had to rely on memorized orthographic conventions to put it in its etymologically correct place. There are some Bulgarian or Macedonian dialects around Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki , Thessalonica, or Salonica is the List of largest cities and second largest cities by country in Greece and the capital of Macedonia , the nation's largest Regions of Greece....
 and Kastoria
Kastoria

Kastoria is a city in northern Greece in the peripheries of Greece of West Macedonia. It is the capital of Kastoria Prefecture, located at . The town's population is estimated as some 20,660 people ....
 in Northern Greece which still keep nasal pronunciation: ????? ???????, ???? ??????

In Russia
Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
, Little Yus was adapted to represent the iotated /ja/ ? in the middle or end of a word; the modern letter Ya
Ya (Cyrillic)

Ya is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet, the civil script variant of Old Cyrillic . Among modern Slavonic languages it is used by Russian language, Belarusian language and Ukrainian language to represent both the combination in initial or post-vocalic position and after a palatalized consonant; in Bulgarian language it may represent or...
 ? is an adaptation of its cursive form of the seventeenth century, enshrined by the typographical reform
Reforms of Russian orthography

The Old Russian language adopted the Cyrillic alphabet, approximately during the tenth century and at about the same time as the introduction of Eastern Christianity into the territories inhabited by the Eastern Slavs....
 of 1708. (This is also why ? in Russian often appears as e
E

E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled e , plural ees . The letter E is the most commonly used letter in the Czech language, Danish language, Dutch language, English language, French language, German language, Hungarian language, Latin language, Norwegian language, Spanish language...
 in Polish
Polish language

Polish , an official language of Poland, has the largest number of speakers of any West Slavic languages. Polish-speakers use the language in a uniform manner through most of Poland, and it has a regular orthography....
; cf. Russian ????; Polish piec.)

In Polish
Polish language

Polish , an official language of Poland, has the largest number of speakers of any West Slavic languages. Polish-speakers use the language in a uniform manner through most of Poland, and it has a regular orthography....
, which is a Slavic language written with Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
, the letter E, e
E

E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled e , plural ees . The letter E is the most commonly used letter in the Czech language, Danish language, Dutch language, English language, French language, German language, Hungarian language, Latin language, Norwegian language, Spanish language...
 has the phonetic value of Little Yus, while A, a
A

The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is a ; the plural is aes or, more commonly, a's....
 has that of Big Yus. The ioticized forms, meanwhile, are written ie, ia in Polish. Curiously, the phonemes written e and a are not historically descended from those represented by Little and Big Yus, but developed after the original nasals merged in Polish.

Little and Big Yus can also be found in the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet
Romanian Cyrillic alphabet

The Romanian Cyrillic alphabet was used to write Romanian language before 1860?1862, when it was officially replaced by Romanian alphabet, although Cyrillic remained in occasional use until circa 1920....
, used until about 1860.

See also

  • Yat
    Yat

    Yat or Jat is the name of the thirty-second letter of the old Cyrillic alphabet, or of the sound it represents. Its name in Old Church Slavonic is et? or iat? , in Bulgarian language yat or e dvoyno , in Russian language and Ukrainian language yat? , in Serbian language jat , Bosnian language, jat, Croatia...
  • E
    E

    E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled e , plural ees . The letter E is the most commonly used letter in the Czech language, Danish language, Dutch language, English language, French language, German language, Hungarian language, Latin language, Norwegian language, Spanish language...
  • A
    A

    The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is a ; the plural is aes or, more commonly, a's....