Basics
of
East Slavic
Cyrillic
To make further explanations shorter and
easier, I need to explain you what are iotated
and non-iotated vowels.
Non-iotated
vowels are normal letters for vowels.
They only represent
one sound
and usually don't do
anything special. Examples are letters "
А
"
and "
О
"
from Part 1.
Iotated
vowels can be read in two ways, depending
on a letter's position in a word.
If an iotated vowel
follows a consonant
, the
consonant is softened
(
palatalized
, to be precise)
and followed by a
vowel sound
.
If an iotated vowel
does not follow a consonant
(like
at the beginning of a word, after some other vowel,
or after non-letter signs "
ь
", "
ъ
", "
ʼ
"
),
it is read as
[j] + a vowel sound
. You can hear this
combination in English words "
u
nion", "
U
niverse"
and "
u
nique".
In Ukrainian and Rusyn, "
Е
"
is
not an iotated vowel
.
In Russian and Belarusian, it is an
iotated
vowel
.
"І"
is an exception: this letter is considered non-
iotated (because it has an iotated counterpart "
Ї
"
),
but it softens a consonant it follows.
Part 4
Ее
Іі
Аа Оо