Ь

The **soft sign** (Ь ь; italics: *Ь ь*) is a letter in the Cyrillic script that is used in various Slavic languages. In Old Church Slavonic, it represented a short or reduced front vowel. However, over time, the specific vowel sound it denoted was largely eliminated and merged with other vowel sounds.

In most contemporary Slavic Cyrillic writing systems, such as those used in East Slavic languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian) and Church Slavic, the soft sign does not represent a distinct sound on its own. Instead, it serves as an indicator of palatalization of the preceding consonant. In the Bulgarian language, it is only used for the sound /j/ in the combination ьо (/jo/) after consonant letters.

Palatalization is a linguistic process in which the middle of the tongue moves closer to the hard palate while pronouncing a consonant. It affects the pronunciation of the preceding consonant by giving it a palatal quality or causing it to become a palatal consonant. The soft sign acts as a visual marker to show that the consonant before it is palatalized.

For example, in Russian, the soft sign is often used after consonants to indicate palatalization. It affects the pronunciation of the preceding consonant and can change the sound of words. The specific effect varies depending on the consonant it follows. In other Slavic languages where the soft sign is used, a similar palatalization function is observed.

It may also be used as a superscript. (ь)

## Uses and meanings

### Palatalization sign

Main article: Palatalization (phonetics)

The soft sign is normally written after a consonant and indicates its *softening*(palatalization) (for example Ukrainian бат**ь**ко 'father'). Less commonly, the soft sign just has a grammatically determined usage with no phonetic meaning (like Russian: туш 'fanfare' and туш**ь** 'India ink', both pronounced /tuʂ/ but different in grammatical gender and declension). In East Slavic languages and some other Slavic languages (such as Bulgarian), there are some consonants that do not have phonetically different palatalized forms but corresponding letters still admit the affixing soft sign.

The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet has had no soft sign as a distinct letter since the mid-19th century: palatalization is represented by special consonant letters instead of the sign (some of these letters, such as ⟨Љ⟩ or ⟨Њ⟩, were designed as ligatures with the grapheme of the soft sign). The modern Macedonian alphabet, based on the Serbian Cyrillic variant, has had no soft sign since its creation, in 1944.

### Before a vowel in East Slavic languages

Between a consonant and a vowel, the soft sign bears also a function of "iotationsign": in Russian, vowels after the soft sign are iotated (compare Russian льют /lʲjut/ '(they) pour/cast' and лют /lʲut/ '(he is) fierce'). The feature, quite consistent with Russian orthography, promulgated a confusion between palatalization and iotation, especially because ⟨ь⟩ usually precedes so-called *soft vowels*. Combinations ⟨ья⟩ (ya), ⟨ье⟩ (ye), ⟨ьё⟩ (yo) and ⟨ью⟩ (yu) give iotated vowels, like corresponding vowel letters in isolation (and word-initially), and unlike its use immediately after a consonant letter in which palatalization can occur but not iotation. In those cases, ⟨ь⟩ may be considered as a sign indicating that a vowel after it is pronounced separately from the previous consonant, but that is the case neither for ⟨ьи⟩ (yi) nor for ⟨ьо⟩ (yo), because these vowels are not iotated in isolation. The latter case, though, is rarely used in Russian (only in loanwords such as ⟨бульон⟩) and can be seen as a replacement of phonetically identical ⟨ьё⟩, which gets rid of an "inconvenient" letter ⟨ё⟩. In Ukrainian and Bulgarian, the spelling ⟨ьо⟩ indicates palatalization, not iotation.

⟨ъ⟩, an "unpalatalization sign", also denotes iotation, as in the case of ⟨ъя⟩, ⟨ъе⟩, ⟨ъё⟩ and ⟨ъю⟩ in Russian. It differs from the soft sign in that it doesn't necessarily soften the preceding consonant like the soft sign does (although consonants preceding the hard sign are still sometimes softened).

Similarly, the soft sign may denote iotation in Belarusian and Ukrainian, but it is not used so extensively as in Russian. Ukrainian uses a quite different repertoire of vowel letters from those of Russian and Belarusian, and iotation is usually expressed by an apostrophe in Ukrainian. Still the soft sign is used in Ukrainian if the sound preceded by an iotated vowel is palatalized.

### In Bulgarian

Among Slavic languages using the Cyrillic script, the soft sign has the most limited use in Bulgarian: while phonemic palatalization does occur, it is very limited, even more than in other hard languages like Serbian (compare Bulgarian *кон* to Russian *конь* or Serbian *коњ*). The only possible position is one between consonants and ⟨о⟩ (such as in names Жельо, Кръстьо, and Гьончо, or the word синьо). Rather, the letter is mostly used in foreign words of French or German origin, such as шофьор (driver, chauffeur).