li [Isaac Penzev] mi tulis
> ...
> | distinguish /ji/ from /i/ and /jM/ from /M/, and I thought
> | to use І /i/ И /ji/ Ъ /M/ Ь /jM/ (while Ы would seem out of
> | place for /M/ where І was /i/) but I was told those
> | assignments would seem weird to a Russophone.
>
> Indeed they are. Cyrillic alphabet has its own story and tradition of
> adaptation to non-Russian langs, but in general it is less flexible to
> non-standard appication of graphemes than Latin, IMHO.
>...
> | Well well
> | there are always the possibility of using Ӥ Ӹ for the
> | preceding /j/.
>
> Surely there are, though in practice those characters mean:
> Ӥ - non-palatalizing /i/ in Udmurt;
> Ӹ - palatalizing /M/ in Mari [info needs verification].
How about <Ӥ> /i/ as distinct from <И> /ji/ ? And maybe <Ӱ> for /ɯ/? Or maybe
use the soft sign <Ь> for /j/? Then there's the use of <Ј> for /j/ as in
Serbian.
If you don't mind venturing a bit from existing encodings, maybe you could come
up with some new characters that are based on existing Cyrillic letters.