Ya (Cyrillic)

Яя Яя

Ya (Я) is the 32nd and last letter of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. It is pronounced as /ja/ (SAMPA).

In Russian language, the word "Я" is the personal pronoun "I".

History

Я is actually a hybrid of two historic letters. One is A iotified (IA), a ligature of І and А, similar to letters Ю or Ѥ. The other is Little Yus (or Yus small, Ѧ). Over time, phonetic distinction between IA and Ѧ was lost, and when Peter I introduced his "civil script" in 1708, the single letter Ya (Я) substituted for both. So, Я is a late addition to the Cyrillic alphabet. It does not exist in the Glagolitic, Greek or Latin alphabets, it has no numerical value and no name other than "Ya".

In Unicode, Я shares codepoints with IA (A iotified). The actual glyph depends on the font.

Its HTML entity is Я or &#x42F for capital and я or я for small letter.

Modern Я looks just like mirrored Latin letter R, see: ЯR, but the two letters (Я and R) are completely different in both origin and pronunciation (Cyrillic R looks like Latin P). However there is a common trope in the West to replace R by Я in titles of books, movies and computer games that are set in Russia in order to add some "Яussiaи flavor."

Some other examples are TETЯIS; computer game and APPAЯATCHIK; fanzine.

Another letter with similar fate is Cyrillic I (И), used instead of N.