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Ya (letter)

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.

Code positions

Character encoding	Case	Binary	Hexadecimal	Octal	Decimal
Unicode	Capital	0000010000101111	042F	2057	1071
	Small	0000010001001111	044F	2117	1103
KOI	Capital	11110001	F1	361	241
	Small	11010001	D1	321	209
Windows 1251	Capital	11011111	DF	337	223
	Small	11111111	FF	377	255
ISO 8859-5	Capital	11001111	CF	317	207
	Small	11101111	EF	357	239

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

Я and R

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."

An early example was the logo for Norman Jewison's film The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming.

Some other examples are TETЯIS computer game and APPAЯATCHIK fanzine.

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

Related articles

• Cyrillic alphabet

А
A Б
Be В
Ve Г
Ge Ѓ
Gje Ґ
Ghe Д
De Ђ
Dje Е
E Є
Ukrainian E Ѐ
E with grave Ё
Yo Ж
Zhe Ѕ
Dze З
Ze И
I Й
short I Ѝ
I with grave І
Ukrainian I Ї
Yi Ј
Je К
Ka Ќ
Kje Л
El Љ
Lje М
Em Н
En Њ
Nje О
O П
Pe Р
Er С
Es Т
Te Ћ
Tshe Ѹ
Ou У
U Ў
U short Ф
Ef Х
Ha Ѡ
Omega Cyrillic Ц
Tse Ч
Che Џ
Dzhe Ш
Sha Щ
Shcha Ъ
Hard sign (yer) Ы
Yery Ь
Soft sign Ѣ
Yat Э
E reversed Ю
Yu Я
Ya ɾa
(not in Unicode)
A iotified Ѥ
E iotified Ѧ
Yus small Ѫ
Yus big Ѩ
Yus small iotified Ѭ
Yus big iotified Ѯ
Ksi Cyrillic Ѱ
Psi Cyrillic Ѳ
Fita Ѵ
Izhitsa Ѷ
Izhitsa with double grave    

(Russian letters bolded; old letters italics)