East Slavic Languages
⟨Ѝ⟩ (as well as any other vowel with grave accent) can be found in older (up to the first decades of the 20th century) Russian and Ukrainian books as stressed variants of regular (unaccented) vowels, like Russian вѝна ('wines') vs. вина̀ ('guilt'). Recently, East Slavonic typographies have begun using the acute accent instead of the grave accent to denote the stress: ви́на, вина́.
Stress marks are optional in East Slavic languages. They are regularly used only in special books like dictionaries, primers, or textbooks for foreigners as the stress is very unpredictable in all three languages, whereas in general texts, they are extremely rare and used mainly to help prevent ambiguity in certain cases or to show pronunciation of exotic words.
Some modern Russian dictionaries use a grave accent to denote the secondary stress in compound words (with an acute accent for the main stress), like жѝзнеспосо́бный ('viable') (from жизнь 'life' and способный 'capable').
Read more about this topic: I With Grave (Cyrillic)
Famous quotes containing the words east and/or languages:
“A puff of wind, a puff faint and tepid and laden with strange odours of blossoms, of aromatic wood, comes out the still night—the first sigh of the East on my face. That I can never forget. It was impalpable and enslaving, like a charm, like a whispered promise of mysterious delight.... The mysterious East faced me, perfumed like a flower, silent like death, dark like a grave.”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
“People in places many of us never heard of, whose names we can’t pronounce or even spell, are speaking up for themselves. They speak in languages we once classified as “exotic” but whose mastery is now essential for our diplomats and businessmen. But what they say is very much the same the world over. They want a decent standard of living. They want human dignity and a voice in their own futures. They want their children to grow up strong and healthy and free.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)