The soft sign (Ь, ь), also known as (the front) yer′, is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In Old Church Slavonic, it represented a short (or "reduced") front vowel. As with its companion, the back yer ‹ъ›, the vowel phoneme it designated was later partly dropped and partly merged with other vowels. In the modern Slavic Cyrillic writing systems (all East Slavic plus Bulgarian and Church Slavic), it does not represent an individual sound, but rather indicates palatalization of the preceding consonant.
‹Ь› was also used in the Soviet Union in the Latinized Karelian alphabet made official in 1931 and used until re-Cyrillicization of Karelian in 1937.
Read more about Soft Sign: Representations, Name of The Letter, Related Letters and Other Similar Characters, Computing Codes
Famous quotes containing the words soft and/or sign:
“Methought her long, small legs and thighs
I with my tendrils did surprise;
Her belly, buttocks, and her waist
By my soft nervelets were embraced;”
—Robert Herrick (1591–1674)
“Every sign by itself seems dead. What gives it life?—In use it is alive. Is life breathed into it there?—Or is the use its life?”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)