Ya (Cyrillic)

Encyclopedia : Y : YA : YAC : Ya (Cyrillic)

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Cyrillic letter Ya
Cyrillic alphabet
А	Б	В	Г	Ґ	Ѓ	Д
Ђ	Е	Ё	Є	Ж	З	Ѕ
И	І	Ї	Й	Ј	К	Ќ
Л	Љ	М	Н	Њ	О	П
Р	С	Т	Ћ	У	Ў	Ф
Х	Ц	Ч	Џ	Ш	Щ	Ъ
Ы	Ь	Э	Ю	Я
Non-Slavic Letters
Ӑ	Ә	Ӕ	Ҕ	Ӗ	Ғ	Ӏ
Ӂ	Җ	Ӝ	Ҙ	Ӟ	Ӡ	Ӣ
Ӥ	Ҡ	Қ	Ҟ	Ҝ	Ң	Ҥ
Ө	Ӧ	Ҧ	Ҫ	Ҷ	Ҹ	Ӵ
Ҽ	Ҿ	Ҩ	Ҳ	Һ	Ҭ	Ҵ
Ӳ	Ӯ	Ү	Ұ	Ӱ
Archaic letters
Ҁ	Ѹ	Ѡ	Ѿ	Ѻ	Ѣ	ІА
Ѥ	Ѧ	Ѫ	Ѩ	Ѭ	Ѯ	Ѱ
Ѳ	Ѵ	Ѷ

Ya (Я, я) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the iotated vowel /ja/ (IPA).

History

Ya is actually a hybrid of two historic letters. One is a iotified (IA), a ligature of decimal I and A, similar to letters like Yu (Ю) or Iotified E (Ѥ). The other is Little Yus (Ѧ). In East Slavic (including Russian), the phonetic distinction between IA ([ja]) and Ѧ (a front nasal vowel /ɛ̃/ in Old Church Slavonic) was lost, so that in many East Slavic texts written in the Cyrillic cursive script (Skoropis), a variant of the letter Ѧ (a rounder form without the 'middle leg') was used to indicate [ja].

When Peter I introduced his "civil script" in 1708, he had this round form of Ѧ adapted to the roman style of the Western European Latin alphabet, which resulted in the form of a backwards Latin R.

Consequently, this new "Я" has no counterpart in the Glagolitic, Greek or Latin alphabets, no numerical value, and no name other than "Ya".

Code positions

In Unicode, Я shares codepoints with IA (A iotified). The actual glyph depends on the font.

Character encoding	Case	Binary	Hexadecimal	Octal	Decimal
Unicode	Capital	0000010000101111	042F	2057	1071
	Small	0000010001001111	044F	2117	1103
KOI	Capital	11110001	F1	361	241
	Small	11010001	D1	321	209
Windows 1251	Capital	11011111	DF	337	223
	Small	11111111	FF	377	255
ISO 8859-5	Capital	11001111	CF	317	207
	Small	11101111	EF	357	239

Its HTML entity is Я or Я for capital and я or я for small letter.

Puns based on this letter

Я is the thirty-third and last letter of the Russian alphabet. In Russian, the word ya (я) is the personal pronoun 'I'. A popular saying based on this fact, "Ya (= I) is the last letter in the alphabet", is used to teach children modesty and humility. In Early Cyrillic alphabet the name az of the first letter а stood for 'I'. In the Bulgarian language az means 'I', and ya is used in sentences to express surprise.

The Cyrillic letters я and и are used in faux Cyrillic typography.

See also

• Iotation

 

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