Yers (fi: syllables)

 --- "Mark J. Reed" skrzypszy:

> ??  What the heck is a "yer"?
Yers are two ultrashort vowels in Slavic derived from short _u_ and _i_ and
represented by the hard and the soft sign (in ASCII often with capital U and
I).
They can be subdivided into strong yers and weak yers: according to Havlik's
rule, yers always disappear [1] in the Slavic languages unless the following
syllable has a yer as well.

Jan

[1] "Disappear" in this sense that they are not pronounced. However,
prerevolutionary Russian still wrote them. In contemporary Russian the hard
sign (= U) disappeared apart from a few particular situations.

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"Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones

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