Iotated vowels In Slavic languages, iotated vowels are preceded by a
palatal approximant before a
vowel, at the beginning of a word, or between two vowels in the middle of a word, creating a diphthongoid, a partial
diphthong. In the
Greek alphabet, the consonant is represented by
iota (ι). For example, the
English apple is
cognate to
Russian (), both come from . As a result of the phenomenon, no native Slavic root starts with an or an but only with a and ; although other vowels are possible. An exception to this is Bulgarian, which has lost iotation for all front vowels (compared to Russian or Polish, who lost it only before ). As it was invented for the writing of Slavic languages, the original
Cyrillic alphabet has relatively complex ways for representing iotation by devoting an entire class of letters to deal with the issue. There are letters which represent iotated vowels; the same letters also palatalize preceding consonants (with or without self-iotation), which is why iotation and palatalization are often mixed up. There are also two special letters (
soft sign Ь and
hard sign Ъ) that also induce iotation; in addition,
Ь palatalizes preceding
consonant, allowing combinations of both palatalized (soft) and plain (hard) consonants with . Originally, these letters produced short vowels and . The exact use depends on the language. The adjective for a phone which undergoes iotation is
iotated. The adjective for a
letter formed as a
ligature of the
Early Cyrillic I (І) and another letter, used to represent iotation, is
iotated.. The use of an iotated letter does not necessarily denote iotation. Even an iotated letter following a consonant letter is not iotated in most orthographies, but iotated letters imply iotated pronunciation after vowels and
soft and
hard signs as well as in isolation. In the Cyrillic alphabet, some letter forms are iotated, formed as a
ligature of
Early Cyrillic I (І) and a vowel. In old inscriptions, other iotated letters, even consonants, could be found, but they are not in the regular alphabet. There are more letters that serve the same function, but their
glyphs are not made in the same way.
Iotated consonants Iotated consonants occur as result of iotation. They are transcribed in
IPA with superscript
j after, so iotated
n is noted as . When
Vuk Karadžić reformed the
Serbian language, he created new letters to represent iotated consonants.
Macedonian uses two of them, but has its own versions for iotated
t and
d (resembling the letters
Г and
К instead of
Т and
Д): == See also ==