Lyubov Ryzhkova-Grishina Magic Primer Letter E. Letter Y: the history of the emergence and approval of the seventh letter of the alphabet
Wikipedia article
Ё, ё - 7th letter of Russian and Belarusian and 9th - Rusyn alphabets. It is also used in some non-Slavic alphabets based on the civil Cyrillic alphabet (for example, Kyrgyz, Mongolian, Chuvash and Udmurt).
In the Old Slavonic and Church Slavonic alphabet, there is no analogous "ё" letter due to the absence of appropriate combinations of sounds; Russian "yokanie" is a common mistake when reading Church Slavonic text.
In 1783 instead existing options the letter "ё" was proposed, borrowed from French, where it has a different meaning. In print, however, it was first used only twelve years later (in 1795). It has been hypothesized about the influence of the Swedish alphabet.
The spread of the letter "ё" in the XVIII-XIX centuries was also hindered by the then attitude to the "yokat" pronunciation as to the bourgeois, the speech of the "vile rabble", while the "church" "yok" accent was considered more cultured, noble and intelligent (among the fighters against yokanym "were, for example, A. P. Sumarokov and V. K. Trediakovsky
What do you know about the letter ё? (shkolazhizni.ru)
The letter E is the youngest in the Russian alphabet. It was invented in 1783 by Ekaterina Dashkova, associate of Catherine II, princess and head of the Imperial Russian Academy.
The letter ё must die (nesusvet.narod.ru)
... in my opinion, the letter E is completely alien to the Russian language and must die
The letter was stolen from the French.
So if the letter E is gallicism, then when, by whom and why was it introduced into Russian?
The letter E is the result of the arbitrariness of one person, Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin. Publishing his articles in journals, Karamzin, for the sake of external effect (or, as they say now, "for show-off") in 1797 applied in the Russian-language text the European umlaut, the Latin "e" with two dots. There were a lot of controversies, but there were even more imitators and the letter Ё quietly made its way into the Russian language, but did not get into the alphabet, however.
Sergey Gogin. Sacred letter of the alphabet (Russian magazine - russ.ru)
Despite the sacred seventh place, which the letter "ё" occupies in the Russian alphabet, it is subjected to the greatest discrimination in the modern press. Apart from literature for children, "yo" has practically disappeared from Russian texts.
Encyclopedias indicate that the letter "e" was introduced into circulation by the historian and writer Nikolai Karamzin, a native of Simbirsk (this is the historical name of Ulyanovsk). Karamzin published a poetic almanac "Aonida", where in 1797 in Ivan Dmitriev's poem "Experienced Solomon's Wisdom, or Thoughts Selected from Ecclesiastes", for the first time in the word "tears" on page 186, the letter "ё" appears in its present outline. In this case, the editor in a footnote on this page indicates: "A letter with two dots replaces" io "".
Mortal letter of the alphabet (06.01.2012, rosbalt.ru)
In 1917, the commission for the reform of Russian spelling proposed to abolish "fit" (ѳ), "yat" (ѣ), "izitsu" (ѵ), "and" (i), in addition - to restrict the use of a solid sign and "recognize the use of the letter" e "as desirable." In 1918, all these points were included in the "Decree on the introduction new spelling"- everything except the last ... The letter" e "plunged into lethargy. They forgot about it.
The abandonment of the letter "ё" can be explained by the desire to reduce the cost of typographic sets and by the fact that letters with diacritics make cursive and continuous writing difficult.
By rooting out the letter "ё" from the texts, we have complicated and at the same time impoverished our language.
Firstly, we distorted the sound of many words (the letter "e" indicated correct placement stress).
Secondly, we made it difficult to perceive the Russian language. The lyrics got rough. To sort out the semantic confusion, the reader must re-read the sentence, the entire paragraph, and sometimes even look for additional information. Often confusion arises from the combination of the words "all" and "all".
And the names of Russian celebrities do not sound the same today as they used to. The Soviet chess player has always been Alekhine, while Fet and Roerich were, after all, Fet and Roerich.
The rules of Russian spelling ("Complete academic reference book, ed. Lopatin", 2006) indicate that the letter "e" is mandatory only "in books addressed to children younger age", and in" educational texts for primary schoolchildren and foreigners studying Russian. "Otherwise, the letter" ё "can be used" at the request of the author or editor. "
The letter "E" marked its serious age (30.11.2011, news.yandex.ru)
In Russia, the Day of the letter "Yo" was celebrated. The history of the seventh letter of the Russian alphabet began on November 29, 1783. On that day, one of the first meetings of the Academy of Russian Literature took place with the participation of Princess Yekaterina Dashkova, writer Denis Fonvizin and poet Gabriel Derzhavin.
Prokhorov will patent 10 trademarks with the letter "Yo" (Yandex News, 4.4.2012)
Mikhail Prokhorov's "Yo-auto" company filed 12 applications for registration of trademarks containing the letter "Yo" with Rospatent at once
At the end of 1783, the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Princess Yekaterina Dashkova, a favorite of Empress Catherine II, gathered academicians of literature, among whom were prominent writers Gavrila Derzhavin and Denis Fonvizin. The princess asked the learned men if they knew how to spell the word "Christmas tree". After a short brainstorming session, the academics decided that they should write "yulka". But on next question Dashkova, whether it is legitimate to display one sound in two letters, pundits could not find an answer. Approaching the blackboard, the princess erased the "i" and "o", writing the letter "e" instead. Since then, in correspondence with the princess, the academicians began to use the letter "e". The letter entered the people only in 1797 through the efforts of Nikolai Karamzin, who used it in his almanac "Aonida".
Ekaterina Dashkova was born in 1744 into a family of Moscow boyars. Her father Roman Vorontsov became fabulously rich during the time of Ekatarina I and even received the nickname "Roman is a big pocket". Dashkova was one of the most educated women of her time, able to argue on an equal footing with philosophers and encyclopedists. She was considered the closest friend of Catherine II. True, on the night when the queen overthrew her husband Peter III Dashkova slept. Catherine could not forgive Dashkova for this, and the friendship fell apart.
The letter "e" gained wide popularity thanks to the famous historian Karamzin. In the first book of his poetic anthology "Aonids" with the letter "e" the words "dawn", "eagle", "moth" and "tears" were printed, as well as the verb "flowed". In this regard, Karamzin was considered the author of the letter "ё" ... And out of all thirty-three letters of the Russian alphabet, none of them caused as much controversy as the letter "E" ...
On November 29, 1783, in the house of the director of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Princess Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova, one of the first meetings of the recently created Russian Academy took place, which was attended by G.R.Derzhavin, D.I.Fonvizin, I.I. , Metropolitan Gabriel and others. The draft of the complete explanatory Slavic-Russian dictionary, the later famous 6-volume "Dictionary of the Russian Academy", was discussed.
The academicians were about to go home when Ekaterina Romanovna asked those present if anyone could write the word "Christmas tree". The academics decided that the princess was joking, but she, having written the word she uttered "Iolka", asked: "Is it legal to depict one sound with two letters?" Noting that “these reprimands have already been introduced by the custom, which, when it does not contradict common sense, should be followed in every possible way,” Dashkova suggested using the new letter “e” “to express words and reprimands, with this consent, beginning as a mother, іolka, іozh , іol ".
Dashkova's arguments seemed convincing, and a member of the Academy of Sciences, Metropolitan Gabriel of Novgorod and St. Petersburg, was asked to evaluate the feasibility of introducing a new letter. On November 18, 1784, the letter "e" received official recognition.
After that, the letter E for 12 years occasionally appeared only in handwritten form and, in particular, in the letters of G.R.Derzhavin. It was printed on a printing press in 1795 at the Moscow University Printing House by H. Ridiger and H. A. Claudia when publishing the book “And My Trinkets” by Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev, a poet, fabulist, chief prosecutor of the Senate, and then Minister of Justice. This printing house, in which, by the way, the newspaper "Moskovskie vedomosti" was printed since 1788, was located on the site of the present Central Telegraph.
The first word printed with the letter E was the word "everything." Then came the words: light, stump, deathless, cornflower. In 1796 in the same printing house N. M. Karamzin in his first book "Aonid" with the letter E prints: dawn, an eagle, a moth, tears and the first verb with E "flowed". Then in 1797 - the first annoying typo in the word with Y. The proofreader did not look, and the circulation was published with "garnished" instead of "faceted". And in 1798 G.R.Derzhavin used the first surname with the letter E - Potemkin. These are Yo's first steps through the pages of books.
The spread of the letter "ё" in the XVIII-XIX centuries was also hindered by the then attitude to the "yokat" pronunciation as to the petty bourgeois, the speech of "vile rabble", while the "ecclesiastical" "yak" accent was considered more cultured and noble.
Formally, the letter "e", like "y", entered the alphabet (and received serial numbers) only in Soviet times.
The decree, signed by the Soviet People's Commissar for Education A. V. Lunacharsky, read: "To recognize the use of the letter ё as desirable, but optional." And on December 24, 1942, by order of the People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR Vladimir Petrovich Potemkin, the mandatory use of the letter "ё" was introduced in school practice, and from that time. it is officially considered part of the Russian alphabet.
For the next 14 years, fiction and scientific literature came out with almost continuous use of the letter "ё", but in 1956, at the initiative of Khrushchev, new, somewhat simplified spelling rules were introduced, and the letter "ё" became optional again.
Now the question of the use of "e" has become the subject of scientific battles, and the patriotic part of the Russian intelligentsia selflessly defends the obligatory use of it. In 2005, in Ulyanovsk, a monument to the letter "ё" was even erected.
In accordance with the Letter of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation of 03.05.2007 No. AF-159/03 "On the Decisions of the Interdepartmental Commission on the Russian Language" it is obligatory to write the letter "ё" in cases where a wrong reading of a word is possible, for example, in names own, since ignoring the letter "ё" in this case is a violation of the Federal Law "On the State Language Russian Federation».
According to the current rules of Russian spelling and punctuation, in the usual printed texts the letter ё is used selectively. However, at the request of the author or editor, any book can be printed sequentially with the letter "e".
Myths about the letter Y
The problem with the letter ё is this: the overwhelming majority of those who think about it or defend it know very little about it and about the language in general. This very fact, of course, negatively affects her reputation. Due to the fact that the quality of argumentation of its supporters is close to zero, it is easier to deal with it than a steamed turnip. Arguments about the sacred seventh place in the alphabet can only work to prove the insanity of their supporter, but not in favor of using the letter itself.
1. The letter ё has always been, and now enemies are fighting with it
This is the most common myth, it is completely incomprehensible where it came from. People seem to say this because no one will check, but the reference to tradition looks convincing. In reality, the prevalence of the letter ё in its entire history only grew (except for a small deviation, when in the 1940s, it seems, there was a directive on its mandatory use, and then everyone was forgotten about it).
You need to understand that once there was not only the letter ё, but even such a sound. In the Church Slavonic language, the words that we pronounce with e are pronounced with e ("brothers and sisters!"), And indeed the pair o - e (ѣ) stands in the row a - I, oh - u and s - and (ï) (see, for example, "Abbreviated practical Slavic grammar with systematic Slavic and Russian examples, selections and dictionaries", Moscow, 1893). Yes, there is no letter e in Church Slavonic either.
The episodic appearance in print at the end of the 18th and in the 19th century of the symbol ё was a response to the appearance of a new sound in speech. But it received its official status after the revolution. In the Russian language textbook of 1911, we read: "E is written in words, when this sound is pronounced like yo: ice, dark, light." Not even written "like yo", written "like yo". And in the alphabet there is no e: after e comes w. It's not for me to judge, but I believe that the letter ё at that time looked in books as outlandish as the ruble sign looks today.
Letter E - store entrance - in Moscow
2. Without it, it is impossible to distinguish everything and everything
This, of course, is not entirely a myth, but there is so much misunderstanding around this situation that it should be analyzed separately.
Let's start with the fact that the words all and all were written with different letters and without any ё, so today we must blame the language reform, which abolished yati, for their indistinguishability, and not at all the practical uselessness of it. Wherein modern rules Russian language requires the writing of two dots in cases of possible discrepancies, therefore, not using it where "everything" is read without it is a spelling error.
It is clear that the situation is also the opposite, when it is necessary to prompt that in a certain case it is e that is read. But this problem cannot be overcome by requiring the obligatory use of e.
Memorial sign to the letter Y in Perm (on the territory of the "Remputmash" locomotive repair plant)
3. Numerous examples of reading difficulties prove the need for it.
When fighting for the letter ё, a set of pairs of words is constantly presented, most of which are some kind of unimaginable crap. It seems that these words were specially invented to protect the letter ё. What the hell is a bucket, what a fable? Before you started collecting examples, did you see or hear these words somewhere?
And, again, in cases where both words can be used equally, spelling rules require the use of e.
For example, in Gordon's Book of Letters, published by ArtLebedev's Publishing House, the word “learn” is not dotted over it, which is why it naturally reads “learn”. This is a spelling mistake.
The very fact that to prove your point of view you need to collect bit by bit examples, most of which are completely unconvincing, as it seems to me, only proves that the problem is out of hand. There are no fewer examples with unspecified stress, but no one fights for the placement of stress.
It would be much more practical if the word was written “healthy”, because “cool” you want to read it with an accent on the first syllable. But for some reason no one is fighting for this!
4. Due to the inconsistency in the use of e, the surname of Montesquieu is incorrectly spelled
We also write the surname Jackson “incorrectly”: in English it is pronounced much closer to Chaksn. The very idea of transferring a foreign-language pronunciation in Russian letters is obviously a failure for everyone, but when it is necessary to defend the letter ё, as I said, no one pays attention to the quality of argumentation.
The topic of transferring foreign names and names by means of Russian graphics generally lies outside the scope of the letter ё and is exhaustively disclosed in the corresponding reference book by R. Gilyarevsky and B. Starostin.
By the way, the sound at the end of Montesquieu is in the middle between e and ё, so in this situation, even if there is a task to accurately convey the sound, the choice of e is obvious. And "Pasteur" is absolutely nonsense; it doesn't smell like iotation or softening, so “Pastor” is much better suited for sound transmission.
5. Poor e is not a letter
The letter ё is often sympathized with due to its unfair non-inclusion in the alphabet. The conclusion that it is not in the alphabet, apparently, is made from the fact that it is not used in the numbering of houses and in lists.
In fact, of course, it is in the alphabet, otherwise the rules of the Russian language would not have been able to require its use in some cases. In the lists, it is not used in the same way as th, due to the similarity with its neighbor. It's just awkward. In some cases, it is advisable to exclude also Z and O because of the similarity with the numbers 3 and 0. It's just that of all these letters, e is closest to the beginning of the alphabet, and therefore its "dropout" is noticeable most often.
By the way, only 12 letters of the alphabet are used in license plates.
The situation was completely different in pre-revolutionary spelling: there was no letter ё in the alphabet. It was just a symbol that some publishers used to show off. Here Zhenya, in another article, puts it in a quote from a 1908 book. It was not in the book itself. Why distort the quote? In the pre-revolutionary text, it looks completely ridiculous.
In any case, fighting for the letter ё is the same nonsense as fighting against it. If you like it - write, if you don't like it - don't write. I like to write because I see no reason not to write it. And a Russian-speaking person must be able to read and so and so.
compilation based on materials from Runet - Fox
Few facts
The letter E is in the sacred, "happy" 7th place in the alphabet.
In Russian there are about 12,500 words with Ё. Of these, about 150 begin with Ё and about 300 end with Ё.
The frequency of occurrence of E is 1% of the text. That is, for every thousand characters of the text, there are an average of ten yoshki.
In Russian surnames, E occurs in about two cases out of a hundred.
There are words in our language with two or even three letters E: "three-star", "four-bucket", "Borelekh" (a river in Yakutia), "Beryogosh" and "Kyogelyon" ( male names in Altai).
More than 300 surnames differ only in the presence of E or E. In them, for example, Lezhnev - Lezhnev, Demina - Demina.
In Russian, there are 12 male and 5 female names, in the full forms of which there is Y. These are Aksyon, Artyom, Nefyod, Parmyon, Peter, Rorik, Savel, Seliverst, Semyon, Fedor, Yarem; Alena, Klena, Matryona, Fyokla, Flona.
In Ulyanovsk, hometown"Yofikator" Nikolai Karamzin, there is a monument to the letter E.
In Russia, there is an official Union of Efikators of Russia, which is engaged in the struggle for the rights of "de-energized" words. Thanks to their tireless activities to besiege the State Duma, now all Duma documents (including laws) are fully "enforced". Yo - at the suggestion of the chairman of the Union Viktor Chumakov - appeared in the newspapers Versia, Slovo, Gudok, Arguments and Facts, etc., in television credits and in books.
Russian programmers have created an etator - a computer program that automatically places a letter with dots in the text. And the artists came up with an ewright - a badge for marking approved publications.
The image of the new letter was probably borrowed from the French alphabet. A similar letter is used, for example, in the spelling of the car brand Citroën, although it sounds completely different in this word. Cultural figures supported Dashkova's idea, the letter stuck. Derzhavin began to use the letter ё in personal correspondence and first used it when writing his surname - Potemkin. However, in print - among the typographic letters - the letter ё appeared only in 1795. Even the first book with this letter is known - this is the book of the poet Ivan Dmitriev "My trinkets". The first word, over which two dots were blackened, was the word "everything", followed by the words: light, stump, deathless, cornflower. And the popularizer of the new letter was N. M. Karamzin, who in the first book of his poetic almanac "Aonida" (1796) published the words "dawn", "eagle", "moth", "tears" and the first verb with the letter e - " flowed ". But, oddly enough, in the famous "History of the Russian State" Karamzin did not use the letter "e".
In the alphabet, the letter fell into place in the 1860s. IN AND. Dahl placed ё together with the letter "e" in the first edition of the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language. In 1875, Leo Tolstoy in his "New Alphabet" sent her to the 31st place, between yat and the letter e. But the use of this symbol in typography and publishing has been fraught with difficulties due to its non-standard height. Therefore, the letter ё officially entered the alphabet and received the ordinal number 7 only in Soviet times - December 24, 1942. However, for many decades, publishers continued to use it only when absolutely necessary, and even then mainly in encyclopedias. As a result, the letter "ё" disappeared from the spelling (and then pronunciation) of many surnames: Cardinal Richelieu, philosopher Montesquieu, poet Robert Burns, microbiologist and chemist Louis Pasteur, mathematician Pafnutiy Chebyshev (in the latter case, even the place of stress changed: Chebyshev; the same beets became beets). We say and write Depardieu instead of Depardieu, Roerich (who is pure Roerich), Roentgen instead of the correct Roentgen. By the way, Leo Tolstoy is actually Leo (like his hero - the Russian nobleman Levin, and not the Jew Levin). The letter ё also disappeared from the spellings of many geographical names - Pearl Harbor, Königsberg, Cologne, etc. See, for example, the epigram on Lev Pushkin (the authorship has not been clarified for sure):
Our friend Pushkin Leo
Not devoid of reason
But with champagne fat pilaf
And duck with milk mushrooms
They will prove us better than words
That he is healthier
Strength of the stomach.
Often the letter "ё", on the contrary, is inserted into words in which it is not needed. For example, "swindle" instead of "scam", "being" instead of "being", "custody" instead of "custody". The first Russian world chess champion was actually called Alexander Alekhin and was very indignant when his noble surname was spelled incorrectly, “popularly” - Alekhin. In general, the letter "e" is contained in more than 12 thousand words, in about 2.5 thousand surnames of Russian citizens and the former USSR, in thousands of place names.
A categorical opponent of using this letter when writing is designer Artemy Lebedev. Somehow she did not like him. I must say that it is really inconveniently located on the computer keyboard. You can, of course, do without it, as, for example, the text will be understandable, even if s ngo sklcht vs glsn bkv. But is it worth it?
In recent years, a number of authors, in particular Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Yuri Polyakov and others, some periodicals, as well as the scientific publishing house "Great Russian Encyclopedia" publish their texts with the obligatory use of the discriminated letter. Well, the creators of the new Russian electric car gave the name to their brainchild from this one letter.
On December 24, 1942, by order of the People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR Vladimir Potemkin, the mandatory use of the letter "ё" was introduced in school practice. From that day on, this letter, which still evokes many conversations and disputes around itself, has officially entered the Russian alphabet. And took an honorable place in it - 7th place.
"RG" cites a number of interesting and little-known facts about the letter "E" and its history.
Princess Christmas tree
The “godmother” of the letter “e” can be considered Princess Yekaterina Romanovna Dashkova, director of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. On November 29 (18), 1783, one of the first meetings of the Russian Academy of Sciences was held, at which the princess was present among the respected poets, writers and philosophers of that time. The project of the 6-volume "Dictionary of the Russian Academy" was discussed. The academicians were about to go home when Ekaterina Romanovna asked those present if anyone could write the word "Christmas tree". The academicians decided that the princess was joking, but she, having written the word she uttered "Iolka", asked: "Is it legal to depict one sound with two letters?" And she suggested using the new letter "e" "to express words and reprimands, for example, such as" matery "," Iolka "," Iozh. " St. Petersburg Gabriel Thus, November 29 (18), 1783 can be considered the birthday of "e".
Poet Gabriel Derzhavin was one of the first to use "e" in personal correspondence. In the printed edition, the letter first appeared in the late 1890s - in the book of the poet Ivan Dmitriev "And My Trinkets", published in 1795 at the Moscow University Printing House. There are the words "everything", "light", "stump", "bezmerytna", "cornflower". However, in scientific works at that time the letter "ё" was still not used. For example, in the "History of the Russian State" by Karamzin (1816-1829) the letter "e" is absent. Although many researchers and philologists credit the writer-historian Karamzin with the introduction of the letter "ё". Among her opponents were such famous figures as the writer and poet Alexander Sumarokov and the scientist and poet Vasily Trediakovsky. Thus, its use was optional.
Not without Stalin
On December 23, 1917 (January 5, 1918), a decree was published, signed by the People's Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky, which instructed "all government and state publications" from January 1 (old style) 1918 to "be printed according to the new spelling." It also said: "To recognize the use of the letter" e "as desirable but optional. And only on December 24, 1942, according to the order of the People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR Vladimir Potemkin, the mandatory use of the letter" e "was introduced in school.
There is a legend that Stalin personally had a hand in this. On December 6, 1942, the head of the Council of People's Commissars, Yakov Chadayev, brought an order for signature, in which the names of several generals were printed with the letter "e", not "e". Stalin flew into a rage, and the very next day, December 7, 1942, the letter "e" appeared in all articles of the Pravda newspaper. However, at first publishers used the letter with two dots at the top, but in the 50s of the twentieth century they began to use it only if necessary. The selective use of the letter "ё" was fixed in the rules of Russian spelling in 1956.
To write or not to write
In accordance with the letter of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation of 03.05.2007 "On the decisions of the Interdepartmental Commission on the Russian Language" it is obligatory to write the letter "ё" in cases where the wrong reading of a word is possible, for example, in proper names, since ignoring the letter " ё "in this case is a violation of the Federal Law" On the State Language of the Russian Federation ".
According to the current rules of Russian spelling and punctuation, the letter "ё" is written in the following cases:
When it is necessary to prevent incorrect reading and understanding of a word, for example: "we learn" as opposed to "learn"; "everything" as opposed to "all"; "perfect" (participle) as opposed to "perfect" (adjective), etc .;
- when it is necessary to indicate the pronunciation of a little-known word, for example: the Olekma river.
- In special texts: primers, school textbooks of the Russian language, textbooks of orthoepy, etc., as well as in dictionaries to indicate the place of stress and correct pronunciation.
According to the same rules, the letter "e" can be used selectively in ordinary printed texts. But at the request of the author or editor, any text or book can be printed with the letter "e".
Especially if there are rarely used, borrowed or complex words: for example, "gueuze", "surfing", "flair", "harder", "crack". Or you need to indicate the correct stress: for example, "fable", "brought", "carried away", "condemned", "newborn", "filler" (the letter "e" is always stressed).
Leo instead of Leo
The optional use of the letter "ё" has led to the fact that today names are written without it:
The philosopher and writer Montesquieu;
- X-ray physics;
- physicist Anders Jonas Angstrom, as well as the angstrom units named after him;
- microbiologist and chemist Louis Pasteur;
- artist and philosopher Nicholas Roerich;
- Nazi leaders Goebbels and Goering;
- the writer Leo Tolstoy (the writer himself pronounced his name in accordance with the old Moscow speech tradition - Leo; members of his family, close friends and numerous acquaintances also called Tolstoy).
The surnames Khrushchev, Gorbachev are also written without the "e".
Other interesting facts
In 2005, in Ulyanovsk, by the decision of the city administration, a monument to the letter "e" was erected - a triangular prism made of granite, on which a lowercase "e" was engraved.
There are about 12.5 thousand words with "e" in Russian. Of these, about 150 begin with "ё" and about 300 end with "ё".
In Russian, words with several letters "e" are also possible, usually these are compound words: "three-star", "four-bucket".
More than 300 surnames differ only in the presence of "e" or "e" in them. For example, Lezhnev - Lezhnev, Demina - Demina. The correctness of the spelling of such surnames in personal documents and various property and inheritance matters is especially important. A mistake can deprive a person, for example, of inheritance. For example, the Elkin family from Barnaul reported that in the 1930s their ancestor lost his inheritance due to the fact that it was registered on the Elkin family. And a resident of Perm, Tatyana Teterkina, almost lost her Russian citizenship due to the incorrect spelling of her last name in her passport.
There is a rare Russian surname Yo of French origin, which in French written in four letters.
The surname of the famous Russian poet Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet (Foeth - German in origin) was distorted when his first book was printed. He gained fame already under the name Fet. At the same time, he spent part of his life under the name Shenshin.
Ё, ё is the 7th letter of the Russian and Belarusian alphabets and the 9th letter of the Ruthenian. It is also used in a number of non-Slavic alphabets based on the civil Cyrillic alphabet (for example, Mongolian, Kyrgyz, Udmurt and Chuvash).
If possible, means the softness of the consonants, being after them, and the sound [o]; in all other cases, it sounds like. In primordial Russian words (in addition to words with the prefixes three- and four-), it is always under stress. Cases of unstressed use are rare, mostly borrowed words - for example, Königsberg surfing, compound words - loessovid or words with three- and four- prefixes - for example, four-part. Here, the letter is phonetically equivalent to the unstressed "e", "and", "I" or has a secondary stress, but it can also reflect the characteristic features of the spelling in the original language.
In the Russian language (ie, in the Russian writing), the letter "ё" stands, first of all, where the sound [(j) o] comes from [(j) e], this explains the form originating from "e" letters (borrowed from Western scripts). In Russian writing, in contrast to Belarusian, according to the rules for using the letter, the dotting above the "e" is optional.
In other Slavic Cyrillic alphabets, there is no letter "ё". To designate the corresponding sounds in the letter in the Ukrainian and Bulgarian languages, after the consonants, they write "ё" and in other cases, "yo". Serbian writing (and the Macedonian based on it) generally do not have special letters for iotated vowels and / or softening the preceding consonant, since to distinguish syllables with a hard and soft consonant, they use different consonants, not different vowels, and iot is always written a separate letter.
In the Church and Old Church Slavonic alphabets, there is no letter equivalent to "ё", since there are no such combinations of sounds; Russian “yokanye” is a common mistake when reading Church Slavonic texts.
Riser and its name
There is no generally accepted official term for the extension element in the letter "ё". In traditional linguistics and pedagogy, the word "colon" was used, but most often in a hundred recent years used a less formal expression - "two dots", or generally tried to avoid mentioning this element separately.
It is considered incorrect to use foreign language terms (dialytics, dieresis, trema or umlaut) in this situation, since they refer to diacritical marks and denote, first of all, a specific phonetic function.
Historical aspects
Introduction of E into use
For a long time, the sound combination (and after the soft consonants - [o]), which appeared in the Russian pronunciation, was not expressed in any way in writing. From the middle of the 18th century. for them, the designation was introduced by means of the letters IO, which are under the common cover. But, such a designation was cumbersome and was rarely used. They used variants: signs o, iô, ё, io, ió.
In 1783, instead of the available options, the letter "ё" was proposed, borrowing from French, where it has a different meaning. However, it was used for the first time in print only 12 years later (in 1795). The influence of the Swedish alphabet was also assumed.
In 1783, on November 29 (according to the old style - November 18), at the house of the head of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Princess Dashkova E.R., one of the first meetings of the recently formed Russian Academy was held, where D.I. Fonvizin, Knyazhnin were present Ya.B., Derzhavin G.R., Lepekhin I.I., Metropolitan Gabriel and others. Discussed the draft of the full version explanatory dictionary(Slavic-Russian), later - the famous 6-volume "Dictionary of the Russian Academy".
The academicians were about to go home, like E.R. Dashkova asked if any of them could write the word "Christmas tree". The pundits thought that the princess was joking, but she wrote the word "Iolka" uttered by her, and asked the question: "Is it legal to depict one sound with two letters?" I also noticed: "These reprimands have already been introduced by custom, which, when it does not contradict common sense, must be followed in every possible way." Ekaterina Dashkova suggested using the “newborn” letter “e” “to express words and reprimands, with this consent beginning as mother, іolka, іozh, іol".
She proved to be convincing in her arguments, and Gabriel, Metropolitan of Novgorod and St. Petersburg, who is a member of the Academy of Sciences, was offered to evaluate the rationality of the introduction of the new letter. So, in 1784, on November 18, the official recognition of the letter "ё" took place.
The princess's innovative idea was supported by a number of leading cultural figures of that period, incl. and Derzhavin, who was the first to use "ё" for personal correspondence. And the first printed edition, where the appearance of the letter "ё" was noticed, in 1795 was the book "And my trinkets" by I. Dmitriev, published by the Moscow University Printing House of H. A. Claudia and H. Ridiger (in this printing house since 1788 printed the newspaper "Moskovskie vedomosti", and it was located on the site of the current building of the Central Telegraph).
The first word printed with the letter "e" became - "everything", then - "cornflower", "stump", "light", "immortal". For the first time the surname with this letter ("Potemkin") was printed by G.R.Derzhavin in 1798.
The letter "ё" gained fame thanks to Karamzin N. M., therefore, until recently, he was considered its author, until the story outlined above received wide publicity. In 1796, in the 1st book of the almanac of poems "Aonida", published by Karamzin, which came out of the same printing house of the university, the words "dawn", "moth", "eagle", "tears ", And the 1st verb is" flow ".
Only it is not clear whether it was Karamzin's personal idea or the initiative of some employee of the publishing house. It should be noted that Karamzin in scientific works (for example, in the famous "History of the Russian State" (1816-1829)) did not use the letter "e".
Distribution problems
Although the letter "ё" was proposed to be introduced in 1783, and was used in print in 1795, long time it was not considered a separate letter and it was not officially entered into the alphabet. This is very typical for the newly introduced letters: the same was the status of the symbol "y", it (in comparison with "e") became obligatory for use back in 1735. In his "Russian spelling" Academician Y. K. Grot noted, that both of these letters “should also take place in the alphabet”, but for a long time this remained only a good wish.
In the XVIII-XIX centuries. an obstacle to the spread of the letter "ё" was the then attitude to such a "yokat" pronunciation, as to the philistine speech, the dialect of "vile rabble", while the "yok" "church" accent was considered more noble, intelligent and cultural (with "yokat "Fought, for example, V. K. Trediakovsky and A. P. Sumarokov).
12/23/1917 (01/05/1918) was published (undated) a decree signed by the Soviet People's Commissar of Education A. V. Lunacharsky, who introduced the reformed spelling as mandatory, it, among other things, says: ".
Thus, the letters "e" and "y" formally entered the alphabet (while receiving serial numbers) only in Soviet times(if you do not take into account the "New alphabet" (1875) by Leo Tolstoy, where there was the letter "e" between "e" and yatom, in 31st place).
12/24/1942 the use of the letter "ё" by order of the People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR was introduced into compulsory school practice, and since then (sometimes, however, they remember 1943 and even 1956, when the spelling regulatory rules) it is considered to be officially included in the Russian alphabet.
The next 10 years, scientific and fiction was produced with an almost continuous use of the letter "ё", and then the publishers returned to the old practice: to use the letter only when absolutely necessary.
There is a legend that Joseph Stalin influenced the popularization of the letter "ё". It says that in 1942, on December 6, I.V. An order was brought to Stalin for signature, where the names of a number of generals were printed not with the letter "e", but with "e". Stalin got angry, and the next day all the articles of the Pravda newspaper came out, suddenly, with the letter "e".
On July 9, 2007, the Minister of Culture of Russia A.S. Sokolov, giving an interview to the Mayak radio station, expressed an opinion about the need to use the letter "e" in written speech.
Basic rules for using the letter "ё"
Legislative acts
12/24/1942 People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR V.P. Potemkin by order No. 1825 introduced the letter "E, E" into the mandatory practice of use. Shortly before the order was issued, an incident occurred when Stalin dealt rudely with the Council of People's Commissars manager Y. Chadayev for the fact that on December 6 (or 5), 1942, he brought him a decree for his signature, where the names of a number of generals were printed without the letter "e".
Chadayev informed the editor of Pravda that the leader wanted to see "yo" in print as well. Thus, already on December 7, 1942, the issue of the newspaper, suddenly, came out with this letter in all the articles.
Federal Law No. 53-FZ "On the State Language of the Russian Federation" dated 01.06.2005 in part 3 of Art. 1 states that when using the Russian modern literary language as state government The RF determines the procedure for approving the rules and norms of Russian punctuation and spelling.
Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation "On the procedure for approving the norms of the modern Russian literary language when it is used as the state language of the Russian Federation, the rules of Russian spelling and punctuation" dated November 23, 2006, No. 714, establishes that, based on the recommendations given by the Interdepartmental Commission on the Russian Language, the list reference books, grammars and dictionaries, which contain the norms of the Russian modern literary language, when it is used in the Russian Federation as the state language, as well as the rules of Russian punctuation and spelling, are approved by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation.
Letter No. AF-159/03 of 03.05.2007 "On the Decisions of the Interdepartmental Commission on the Russian Language" of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation prescribes to write the letter "ё" In this case, ignoring the letter "ё" violates the requirements of the Federal Law "On the State Language of the Russian Federation".
According to the current rules of Russian punctuation and spelling, in texts with ordinary printing, the letter ё is used selectively. But, at the request of the editor or the author, any book can be printed using sequentially the letter ё.
Sounding "Yo"
The letter "e" is used:
To convey the stressed vowel [o] and at the same time indicate the softness of the previous consonant: youth, comb, crawling, oats, lying down, during the day, honey, dog, everything, drifted, Fedor, aunt (after r, k, x this is used only for borrowing : Höglund, Goethe, liqueur, Cologne, the only exception is actually Russian word weave, weave, weave, weave with derivatives, and formed in Russian from the borrowed word alarmist);
To pass the percussive [o] after the hissing ones: silk, burn, click, damn (in this position, the conditions for choosing between writing through "o" or through "ё" are set by a rather complex system of lists of exception words and rules);
To convey a combination of [j] and percussive sound [o]:
At the beginning of words: capacity, hedgehog, tree;
After consonants (a separating mark is used): volume, viet, linen.
After the letters of the vowels: her, loan, striker, tip, spit, forge;
In primordial Russian words, only the percussive sound "ё" is possible (even if the stress is secondary: loess-like, four-storied, triple,); if, during word formation or inflection, the stress switches to another syllable, then "e" will be replaced by "e" )).
Along with the letter "ё" in borrowings, the same sound meaning can be transmitted after consonants - combinations of ё and in other cases - yo. Also in borrowings "ё" can be an unstressed vowel.
E and E
Officially, since 1956, the "Rules of Russian Spelling and Punctuation" defines the cases when "ё" is used in writing:
"one. When it is necessary to prevent incorrect reading and understanding of a word, for example: we learn as opposed to learn; everything is unlike everything; a bucket as opposed to a bucket; perfect (participle) as opposed to perfect (adjective), etc.
2. When it is necessary to indicate the pronunciation of a little-known word, for example: the Olekma river.
3. In special texts: primers, school textbooks of the Russian language, textbooks of orthoepy, etc., as well as in dictionaries to indicate the place of stress and correct pronunciation
Note. In foreign words, at the beginning of words and after vowels, yo is written instead of the letter e, for example; iodine, district, major. "
Section 5 of the new edition of these rules (published in 2006 and approved by the Spelling Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences) regulates these issues in more detail:
“The use of the letter ё can be consistent and selective.
The consistent use of the letter ё is mandatory in the following types of printed texts:
a) in texts with consistently placed stress marks;
b) in books addressed to young children;
c) in educational texts for primary school students and foreigners studying Russian.
Note 1. The consistent use of ё is accepted for the illustrative part of these rules.
Note 3. In dictionaries, words with the letter e are placed in the general alphabet with the letter e, for example: barely, unctuous, fir-tree, spruce, crawl, fir-tree, fir-tree, spruce; have fun, have fun (smiling), fun, funny, fun.
In ordinary printed texts, the letter ё is used selectively. It is recommended to use it in the following cases.
1. To prevent incorrect recognition of a word, eg: everything, palate, summer, perfect (as opposed to the words everything, sky, summer, perfect), including to indicate the place of stress in a word, eg: bucket, we recognize (as opposed to a bucket, we find out).
2. To indicate the correct pronunciation of a word - either rare, not well-known, or having a widespread mispronunciation, eg: gözy, surfing, flair, harder, crack, including to indicate the correct stress, eg: fable, given, carried away , convict, newborn, filler.
3. In proper names - surnames, geographical names, for example: Konenkov, Neyolova, Katrin Deneuve, Schrödinger, Dezhnev, Koshelev, Chebyshev, Vyoshenskaya, Olekma. "
"Yo", "yo" and "yo" in borrowed words and the transfer of foreign proper names
The letter "ё" is often used to convey the sounds [ø] and [œ] (eg, denoted by the letter "ö") in foreign names and words.
In borrowed words, to write a combination of phonemes such as / jo /, letter combinations "ё" or "yo" are usually used:
After consonants, at the same time softening them ("broth", "battalion", "mignon", "guillotine", "senior", "champignon", "pavilion", "fjord", "companion", etc.) - in the Romance languages usually in places after the palatalized [n] and [l] is written "bo".
At the beginning of words ("iota", "iodine", "yogurt", "yoga", "York", etc.) or after vowels ("district", "coyote", "meiosis", "major", etc.) spelled "yo";
However, in recent decades, the "e" is increasingly used in these cases. It has already become a normative element in the systems of transmission of names and names (transliterated) from a number of Asian languages (for example, the Kontsevich system for the Korean language and the Polivanov system for the Japanese language): Yoshihito, Shogun, Kim Yongnam.
In European borrowings, the sound is conveyed by the letter "ё" very rarely; it is most often found in words from the languages of Scandinavia (Jormungand, yotun), but, as a rule, it exists along with the usual transmission through "yo" (eg, Jormungand) and is often considered abnormal.
"E" in borrowed words is often unstressed and in this position its pronunciation is indistinguishable from the letters "I", "and" or "e" (Erdos, shogunat, etc.), that is, its initial clarity is lost and it sometimes turns into just an indication of a certain pronunciation in the original language.
Consequences of the optional use of the letter "ё"
The slowness of the entry of the letter "ё" into the practice of writing (which, by the way, did not take place to the end) is explained by its inconvenient form for cursive writing, which contradicts its main principle - the fusion (without tearing the pen off a sheet of paper) of the outline, as well as the technical difficulties of technologies publishing houses of pre-computer times.
In addition, people with surnames that have the letter "e" often have difficulties, sometimes insurmountable, during the execution of various documents, since some employees are irresponsible in writing this letter. This problem became especially acute after the introduction of the USE system, when there is a danger of differences in the spelling of the name in the passport and in the Certificate on the results of the USE passing.
The habitual uselessness of the use led to the erroneous reading of a number of words, which gradually became generally accepted. This process affected everything: a huge number of personal names, and numerous common names.
Stable ambiguity is caused by words written without the letter ё such as: gland, everything, flax, take a break, blowjob (fly by without touching, past), perfect, planted, summer, recognize, palate, tapeworm, is recognized, etc. erroneous pronunciation (without ё) and stress shift in the words beet, newborn, etc.
"E" turns into "e"
The ambiguity contributed to the fact that sometimes the letter "e" began to be used in writing (and, naturally, to read [`o]) in those words where it should not be. For example, instead of the word "grenadier" - "grenadier", and instead of the word "scam" - "swindle", also instead of the word "custody" - "custody", and instead of the word "being" - "being", etc. Sometimes this mispronunciation and spelling becomes common.
Thus, the famous chess player Alexander Alekhin, the world champion, was, in fact, Alekhin and was very indignant if his name was pronounced and written incorrectly. His surname belongs to the noble family of the Alekhins and is not a derivative of the familiar variant “Alekha” from the name of Alexei.
In those positions where it is necessary to be not ё, but e, it is recommended to affix the stress in order to prevent incorrect recognition of words (everything, take) or erroneous pronunciation (grenadier, afera, Krez, debely, Olesha).
Due to the spelling of words without e in the 20-30s. XX century there were a lot of pronunciation errors of those words that people learned from newspapers and books, and not from colloquial speech: musketeer, youth, chauffeur (these words said "e" instead of "e").
Orthoepy: the emergence of new options
Due to the optional use of the letter "ё", words appeared in the Russian language that allow the possibility of writing both with the letter "e" and with "ё", and the corresponding pronunciation. For example, faded and faded, maneuver and maneuver, whitish and whitish, bile and bile, etc.
Such variants constantly appear in the language due to the operation of contradictory analogies. For example, the word overshoot has variants of pronunciation with e / e due to the double motivation: overshoot / overshoots. The use or non-use of the letter "ё" does not play a role here. But, developing naturally, literary language, as a rule, tends to get rid of options: either one of them will become non-literary, incorrect (holo [l'o] ditsa, from [d'e] wka), or different meanings will acquire pronunciation variants (is [t'o] kshiy - is [t'e] kshiy).
It is predominantly pronounced not "glider", but "glider" (stressed 1st syllable), since the following tendencies exist in Russian: in the names of mechanisms, machines, different devices the stress on the 1st syllable is preferable, or, more precisely, on the penultimate, i.e., glider, trier, glider, tanker, and on the last - when specifying the character: combine operator, driver, watchman.
Inconsistency in the use of the letter "e" is faster an artificial than a natural factor. And it helps to slow down the natural development of the language, giving rise to and maintaining pronunciation options not due to intralingual reasons.
