Hard sign

In Modern Russian, the letter "ъ" is called the hard sign (твёрдый знак / tvjordyj znak). It has no phonetic value of its own and is purely an orthographic device. Its function is to separate a number of prefixes ending in consonants from subsequent morphemes that begin with iotated vowels. In native words, it is therefore only seen in front of the letters "я", "е", "ё", and "ю" (ja, je, jo, and ju in English). The hard sign marks the fact that the sound [j] continues to be heard separately in the composition. For example:

• сесть [ˈsʲesʲtʲ] sjestʹ 'sit down'
• съесть [ˈsjesʲtʲ] sʺjestʹ perfective form of 'eat'

It therefore functions as a kind of "separation sign" and has been used only sparingly in the aforementioned cases since the spelling reform of 1918. The consonant before the hard sign often becomes somewhat softened (palatalized) due to the following iotation. As a result, in the twentieth century there were occasional proposals to eliminate the hard sign altogether, and replace it with the soft sign ь, which always marks the softening of a consonant. However, in part because the degree of softening before ъ is not uniform, the proposals were never implemented. The hard sign ъ is written after both native and borrowed prefixes. It is sometimes used before "и" (i), non-iotated vowels or even consonants in Russian transcriptions of foreign names to mark an unexpected syllable break, much like an apostrophe in Latin script (e.g. Чанъань — Chang'an), the Arabic ʽayn (e.g. Даръа — Darʽa [ˈdarʕa]), or combined with a consonant to form a Khoisan click (e.g. Чъхоан — ǂHoan). However, such usage is not uniform and, except for transliteration of Chinese proper names, has not yet been formally codified (see also Russian phonology and Russian orthography).

Before 1918, a hard sign was normally written at the end of a word when following a non-palatal consonant, even though it had no effect on pronunciation. For example, the word for "male cat" was written "котъ" (kotʺ) before the reform, and "кот" (kot) after it. This old usage of ъ was eliminated by the spelling reform of 1918, implemented by the Bolsheviks after the 1917 October Revolution. Because of the way this reform was implemented, the issue became politicized, leading to a number of printing houses in Petrograd refusing to follow the new rules. To force the printing houses to comply, red sailors of the Baltic Fleet confiscated type carrying the "parasite letters".[3][4] Printers were forced to use a non-standard apostrophe for the separating hard sign, for example:

• pre-reform: съѣздъ (s'jezd')
• transitional: с’езд (s’jezd)
• post-reform: съезд (s'jezd)

In the beginning of the 1920s, the hard sign was gradually restored as the separator. The apostrophe was still used afterward on some typewriters that did not include the hard sign, which became the rarest letter in Russian. In Belarusian and Ukrainian, the hard sign was never brought back, and the apostrophe is still in use today.

According to the rough estimation presented in Lev Uspensky's popular linguistics book A Word On Words (Слово о словах / Slovo o slovakh), which expresses strong support for the reform, the final hard sign made up about 3.5% of printed text and thus wasted paper and ink, which provided the economic grounds for the reform.

Printing houses set up by Russian émigrés abroad kept using the pre-reform orthography for some time, but gradually they adopted the new spelling. Meanwhile, in the USSR, Dahl’s Explanatory Dictionary was repeatedly (1935, 1955) reprinted in compliance with the old rules of spelling and the pre-reform alphabet.

Today the final yer is sometimes used in Russian brand names: the newspaper Kommersant (Коммерсантъ) uses the letter to emphasize its continuity with the pre-Soviet newspaper of the same name. Such usage is often inconsistent, as the copywriters may apply the simple rule of putting the hard sign after a consonant at the end of a word but ignore the other former spelling rules, such as the use of ѣ and і.[5] It is also sometimes encountered in humorous personal writing adding to the text an "old-fashioned flavour" or separately denoting true.