page_title: History of the Slavic languages
section_title: The yat vowel ě
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Slavic languages / Dialectal differentiation / The yat vowel ě
caption_attribution_description: Български: Розовите линии очертават границите между диалектите с изговор дедо, бел и диалектите с изговор дядо, бял (&lt; старобълг. дѣдъ, бѣлъ). Диалектите с друг изговор на ятовата гласна не са вземани предвид при очертаването на границите. Данните са според обобщаващия том на Български диалектен атлас. English: Yat border between the Bulgarian dialects.
context_page_description: The history of the Slavic languages stretches over 3000 years, from the point at which the ancestral Proto-Balto-Slavic language broke up into the modern-day Slavic languages which are today natively spoken in Eastern, Central and Southeastern Europe as well as parts of North Asia and Central Asia.
  The first 2000 years or so consist of the pre-Slavic era: a long, stable period of gradual development during which the language remained unified, with no discernible dialectal differences.
  The last stage in which the language remained without internal differences can be dated to around 500 AD and is sometimes termed Proto-Slavic proper or Early Proto-Slavic. Following this is the Common Slavic period, during which the first dialectal differences appeared but the entire Slavic-speaking area continued to function as a single language, with sound changes tending to spread throughout the entire area.
context_section_description: The phonetic realization of *ě was also subject to phonetic variation across different dialects. In Early Proto-Slavic, *ě was originally distinguished from *e primarily by length.  Later on, it appears that initially it was lowered to a low-front vowel [æ] and then diphthongized to something like [iæ]. This is still reflected as ia or ja (i.e. /a/ with palatalization of the previous consonant) in certain contexts before hard consonants in Bulgarian and Polish; but in most areas it was raised to [ie]. This generally proceeded further in one of three directions:
  Remain as a diphthong.
  Simplify to [e].
  Simplify to [i].
  All three possibilities are found as variants within the Serbo-Croatian area, respectively known as the ijekavian, ekavian and ikavian dialects. An ijekavian dialect served as the basis of almost all the literary Serbo-Croatian forms (all except literary Serbian as used specifically within Serbia itself, which is ekavian). These dialects have short je, long ije (often pronounced as [jeː]). The ijekavian dialects of Serbo-Croatian are in fact the only Slavic languages that consistently preserve a reflex of *ě distinct from all other Common Slavic sounds. (Elsewhere, at most only some cases of *ě, e.g. those in stressed syllables, have a distinct reflex.)
  In cases where the reflex has remained as a diphthong, it has most commonly developed to [je], often followed by merger of the [j] with a previous consonant to form a palatal or palatalized consonant. In Czech, for example, the reflex of *ě is sometimes still spelled ě, but this in fact indicates [je] after labials, and [e] after t d n, which become pronounced as palatal sounds [c ɟ ɲ]; in other cases the reflex is simply e.
  In Old Russian, the reflex of *ě simplified to [e], but this did not cause a merger with *e in stressed syllables, which was pronounced [ɛ]. Later, this /ɛ/ (also including reflexes of the strong front yer) changed into /jo/ (i.e. /o/ with palatalization of the preceding consonant) when not followed by a palatalized consonant: cf. modern Russian лёд /lʲod/ 'ice' (loans from Church Slavonic do not display this change: небо "sky", крест "cross", перст "finger" in elevated style). The result of the sound change may be expressed in the present-day spelling by means of a diaeresis over the letter e (ё), but generally isn't. In contrast, the sound change did not affect the reflex of original yat, which continued to be pronounced as [e], eventually merging with the surviving unaffected instances of /ɛ/ as late as the 1700s (seen, respectively, in the words хлеб /xlʲeb/ 'bread' and печь /pʲet͡ɕ/ 'oven'). Original yat continued to be represented distinctly from /e/ resulting from other sources in spelling until the spelling reforms of 1918, and is still distinguished in some Northern Russian dialects.
  Similarly, in Ukrainian, the reflex of *ě simplified to i [i], but this did not cause a merger with either *e or *i in stressed syllables, because both sounds developed to a phoneme y [ɪ]. (However, in some instances, former *o is also reflected as i.)
  The following table shows the development of *ě in various languages:
  Bulgarian has ja only when stressed and before a (formerly) hard consonant, e otherwise (e.g. *tělo "body" produces singular тя́ло tjálo and plural тела́ telá).
  Macedonian has only e. The reflex between the Bulgarian and Macedonian versions forms an important isogloss known as the jat' border, running approximately from Nikopol on the Danube to Solun (Thessaloniki) on the Aegean Sea.
  Serbo-Croatian shows great dialectal diversity; see above.
  Polish has ia before a (formerly) hard dental, ie otherwise.
  Some Northern Russian dialects have *ě > i, as in Ukrainian.
  Some Ukrainian dialects, as well as some Northern Russian sub-dialects, preserve an earlier form /i̯e/.
  Slovak has short e, long ie.
caption: Yat border
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