Yat or jat (Ѣ ѣ; italics: Ѣ ѣ) is the thirty-second letter of the old Cyrillic alphabet.
There is also another version of yat, the iotated yat (majuscule: , minuscule: ), which is a Cyrillic character combining a decimal I and a yat. There was no numerical value for this letter and it was not in the Glagolitic alphabet. It is encoded in Unicode 5.1 at positions U+A652 and U+A653.
Usage Yat represented a Common Slavic long vowel, usually notated as . It is generally believed to have represented the sound or , like the pronunciation of in "cat" or in "bet", respectively, which was a reflex of earlier Proto-Slavic * and *. The sound represented by yat developed late in the history of Common Slavic, which is significant for its role in the Slavic second palatalization of the Slavic velar consonants.
The Glagolitic alphabet contained only one letter for both yat and the Cyrillic iotated a . According to Kiril Mirchev, this meant that after in the Thessaloniki dialect (which served as a basis for Old Church Slavonic) mutated into a wide vowel that resembled or was the same as yat ().
To this day, the most archaic Bulgarian dialects, i.e., the Rup and Moesian dialects feature a similar phonetic change where after iota and the formerly palatal consonants (), () and () becomes , e.g. -> ("(I) was standing"), -> ("drunkard"), -> ("frogs"), etc. Dialects that still feature this phonetic change include the Razlog dialect, the Smolyan dialect, the Hvoyna dialect, the Strandzha dialect, individual subdialects in the Thracian dialect, the Shumen dialect, etc.
This problem did not exist in the Cyrillic alphabet, which had two separate letters for yat and iotated a, and . Any subsequent mix-ups of yat and iotated a and/or other vowels in Middle Bulgarian manuscripts are owing to the ongoing transformation of the Bulgarian vowel and consonant system in the Late Middle Ages.
The letter used to constitute part of the official Cyrillic alphabet for the Interslavic language in the past, and still sees occasional use among certain users of the language due to its unambiguous function and sound. However, due to the letter being out of use in any living, national language for many decades, it was decided to replace the grapheme for the yat with Є to support the language's goal of immediate readability and understandability for people with no background in Slavic studies. Regardless, the Ѣ symbol remains in unofficial use as part of extended Cyrillic, which officially does not exist but is present de facto and employs certain archaic Cyrillic letters. The pronunciation of the yat sound in Interslavic is similar to that of Czech: [ʲɛ] or [jɛ], and it can optionally palatalize preceding consonants.
An extremely rare "iotated yat" form also exists, documented only in Svyatoslav's Izbornik from 1073.
Standard reflexes In various modern Slavic languages, yat has reflected into various vowels. For example, the Proto-Slavic root *bělъ "white" became:
in Standard Russian (dialectal , or even in some regions) in Ukrainian and Rusyn in Belarusian - in Bulgarian ( - in Western dialects) in Macedonian in the standard Serbian Ekavian variant of Serbo-Croatian (genitive ) in Ikavian Serbo-Croatian in the standard Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian Ijekavian variants of Serbo-Croatian (genitive ) in Slovenian in Polish in Czech in Slovak.
Other reflexes Other reflexes of yat exist; for example: Proto-Slavic *telěga / телѣга became (; ѣ > i reflex) in Serbo-Croatian. Proto-Slavic *orěhъ / орѣхъ became (; ѣ > a reflex) in Serbo-Croatian.
Confusion with other letters Due to these reflexes, yat no longer represented an independent phoneme but an already existing one, represented by another Cyrillic letter. As a result, children had to memorize by rote whether or not to write yat. Therefore, the letter was dropped in a series of orthographic reforms: in Serbian with the reform of Vuk Karadžić, in Ukrainian-Ruthenian with the reform of Panteleimon Kulish, later in Russian and Belarusian with the Bolshevik reform in 1918, and in Bulgarian and Carpathian dialects of Ruthenian language as late as 1945.
The letter is no longer used in the standard modern orthography of any of the Slavic languages written with the Cyrillic script, but survives in Ukrainian (Ruthenian) liturgical and church texts of Church Slavonic in Ruthenian (Ukrainian) edition and in some written in the Russian recension of Church Slavonic. It has, since 1991, found some favor in advertising to deliberately invoke an archaic or "old-timey" style. Likewise, it survives among some users of Interslavic to preserve its historical roots.
Bulgarian
In Bulgarian the different reflexes of the yat form the so-called Yat border (ятова граница), running approximately from Nikopol on the Danube to Solun (Thessaloniki) on the Aegean Sea. West of that isogloss, old yat is always realized as . East of it, the reflexes of yat prototypically alternate between or (in stressed syllables when not followed by a front vowel) and (in all other cases). The division of the dialects of the Eastern South Slavic into western and eastern subgroup running along the yat border is the most important dividing isogloss there.Anna Lazarova, Vasil Rainov, On the minority languages in Bulgaria in Duisburg Papers on Research in Language and Culture Series, National, Regional and Minority Languages in Europe. Contributions to the Annual Conference 2009 of EFNIL in Dublin, issue 81, editor Gerhard Stickel, Peter Lang, 2010, ISBN 3631603657, pp. 97-106. The open articulation of yat (as or ) and the reflexes of Proto-Slavic *tj/*ktĭ/*gtĭ and *dj as () and () have traditionally been considered the two most distinctive phonetic features of Old Bulgarian. Based on the preserved articulation of yat as in the remote eastern Albanian villages of Boboshticë and Drenovë;Георгиева, Елена и Невена Тодорова, Българските народни говори, София 1986, с. 79. (Georgieva, Elena and Nevena Todorova, Bulgarian dialects, Sofia 1986, p. 79.)Бояджиев, Тодор А. Помагало по българска диалектология, София 1984, с. 62. (Boyadzhiev Todor A. "Handbook on Bulgarian Dialectology", Sofia, 1984, р. 62.)Trubetzkoy, Nikolai. Principles_of_Phonology, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1977, p. 277, 279 (note 9)) preserved archaic Slavic toponyms in southern and eastern Albania, Thessaly and Epirus featuring ia, ea or a in yat's etymological place, e.g., or (renamed Moschopotamos in 1926) from , "cornel-tree" (see also Dryanovo); (renamed :el:Λεπτοκαρυά Ιωαννίνων in 1927) from , "hazel" (see also Lyaskovets); Labovë e Kryqit and Labovë e Madhe from , "bread" (see also Hlyabovo), etc.; the consistent etymological use of at the Ohrid Literary School until the mid-1200s; the use of ia, ea or a in yat's etymological place in a number of toponyms in a 1019 Greek-language charter by Byzantine emperor Basil II "the Bulgar Slayer" relating to the newly created Theme of Bulgaria, e.g., for (Prizren); for (Sofia); for (Prilep); for the medieval fortress of (Devol, now in eastern Albania); for the medieval fortress of (Prosek), etc.; the use of ea or a in yat's etymological place in a number of local toponyms in the area of modern-day Strumica in a 1152 Greek-language charter by Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos, relating to the Holy Mother of God monastery in Veljusa, e.g., for (), for , for , for ; the 16th-century Greek-Bulgarian lexicon from Bogatsko in southwestern Macedonia written in Greek letters, which featured ia in yat's etymological place, e.g., , mliako ("milk"); , želiazo ("iron"); , viadro ("pale"); , vriateno ("spindle"); , poviasmo ("distaff"); , viaždi ("eyebrows"); , koliano ("knee"); , neviasta ("bride"), , riaka ("river"), , viater ("wind"), etc., indicating that the Kostur dialect was still yakavian at the time; etc. The entire areas of modern Bulgarian and Macedonian are assumed to have been ѣkavian/yakavian until the Late Middle Ages.
In addition to the replacement of with in a number of Old and Middle Bulgarian Cyrillic manuscripts—reflecting the mutation of iotated a into , the opposite process of mutation of yat into palatalised consonant + was also underway. The process affected primarily yat in stressed syllables followed by hard consonant, with multiple examples present in manuscripts from both West and East, e.g. the Grigorovich Prophetologion of the late 1100s (e.g., instead of , "body"), the Tarnovo Gospel of 1273 (e.g, instead of , "them"), the Strumitsa Apostle of the mid-1200s (e.g., instead of , "all-wise"), etc.
However, the most certain proof of yakavian pronunciation of —and another confirmation that currently Ekavian dialects used to be Yakavian in the Middle Ages—comes from the use of hardened consonant + a in yat's etymological place. While individual examples of hardened () or () + can be found even in Old Bulgarian manuscripts, the mutation is most consistent after hardened () and () in Middle Bulgarian manuscripts. Thus, the Strumitsa Apostle, for example, features hosts of examples, e.g., instead of ("whole", neutr. sing.), instead of ("to kiss"), instead of ("chastely"), instead of ("hands", dual), etc. etc.
An opposite process of narrowing of yat into started in the west in the 1200s, with a first example of consistent replacement of with in Tsar Constantine Tikh's Virgin Charter of the early 1260s. The Charter, which was written in Skopje, predates the first Ekavian Serbian document (dated to 1289) by 15–20 years, which refutes the nationalistic claims of Serbian linguists, e.g. Aleksandar Belić that Ekavism is a uniquely Serbian phenomenon and confirms, e.g., Nicolaas van Wijk's theory that it is a native Western Bulgarian development.
Mirchev and Totomanova have linked the mutation of yat into to either consonant depalatalization in stressed syllables or to unstressed syllables. Thus, those Bulgarian dialects that retained their palatalized consonants remained Yakavian in stressed syllables, whereas those that lost them moved towards Ekavism; unstressed yat, in turn, became practically everywhere. This eventually led to the current dialectal division of Eastern South Slavic into Eastern Bulgarian Yakavian and Western Bulgarian and Macedonian Ekavian.
The different reflexes of yat define the so-called yat boundary (), which currently runs roughly from Nikopol on the Danube to Thessaloniki on the Aegean Sea. West of that isogloss, yat is always realized as . East of it, there are different types of yakavism. Standard Bulgarian's alternation of yat between or in stressed syllable before a hard syllable/consonant and in all other cases is only characteristic of the Balkan dialects (cf. Maps no. 1 & 2).
Examples of the alternation in the standard language (and the Balkan dialects) in the form (stressed, followed by hard consonant/syllable)→(stressed, followed by soft consonant/syllable)→(unstressed) follow below:
("white", masc. sing.) [adj.] → ("white", pl.) [adj.] → ("whiteness") [n.] ("milk") [n.] → ("milky") [adj.] → ("milkman") [n.] ("foam") [n.] → ("to foam") [v.] → ("foamy") [adj.] ("laughter") [n.] → ("to laugh") [v.] → ("laughable") [adj.] ("(I) succeeded") [v.] → ("successful") [adj.] → ("success rate") [n.] ("coast") [n.] → ("coastal") [adj.] → ("the coast") [n.]
The Moesian dialects in the northeast and the Rup dialects in the southeast feature a variety of other alternations, most commonly or in stressed syllable before hard consonant/syllable, in stressed syllable before soft consonant/syllable and in unstressed syllables (cf. Maps no. 1 & 2). The open articulation as before hard consonant/syllable has survived only in isolated dialects, e.g., Banat Bulgarian and in clusters along the yat boundary. The open articulation as after hardened () survives as a remnant of former yakavism in a number of western Bulgarian and eastern Macedonian dialects (cf. Map no. 3).