Ы

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Cyrillic letter Yery

Unicode (hex)
majuscule: U+042B
minuscule: U+044B
Cyrillic alphabet
А	Б	В	Г	Ґ	Д	Ђ
Ѓ	Е	Ѐ	Ё	Є	Ж	З
Ѕ	И	Ѝ	І	Ї	Й	Ј
К	Л	Љ	М	Н	Њ	О
П	Р	С	Т	Ћ	Ќ	У
Ў	Ф	Х	Ц	Ч	Џ	Ш
Щ	Ъ	Ы	Ь	Э	Ю	Я
Non-Slavic letters
Ӑ	Ӓ	Ә	Ӛ	Ӕ	Ғ	Ҕ
Ӻ	Ӷ	Ԁ	Ԃ	Ӗ	Ӂ	Җ
Ӝ	Ԅ	Ҙ	Ӟ	Ԑ	Ӡ	Ԇ
Ӣ	Ҋ	Ӥ	Қ	Ӄ	Ҡ	Ҟ
Ҝ	Ԟ	Ԛ	Ӆ	Ԓ	Ԡ	Ԉ
Ԕ	Ӎ	Ӊ	Ң	Ӈ	Ҥ	Ԣ
Ԋ	Ӧ	Ө	Ӫ	Ҩ	Ҧ	Ҏ
Ԗ	Ҫ	Ԍ	Ҭ	Ԏ	Ӯ	Ӱ
Ӳ	Ү	Ұ	Ҳ	Ӽ	Ӿ	Һ
Ҵ	Ҷ	Ӵ	Ӌ	Ҹ	Ҽ	Ҿ
Ӹ	Ҍ	Ӭ	Ԙ	Ԝ	Ӏ
Archaic letters
Ҁ	Ѻ	ОУ	Ѡ	Ѿ	Ѣ	Ꙗ
Ѥ	Ѧ	Ѫ	Ѩ	Ѭ	Ѯ	Ѱ
Ѳ	Ѵ	Ꙟ
List of Cyrillic letters
Cyrillic digraphs

Yery or Yeru (Ы, ы, usually called "Ы" [ɨ] in modern Russian) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. It represents the phoneme /i/ after non-palatalized (hard) consonants in the Belarusian, Rusyn and Russian alphabets. Because of phonological processes, the actual realization of /i/ after most consonants (<д, з, л, н, р, с, т, or ц>) is retracted to a close central unrounded vowel [ɨ], or [ʷi] after the labials б, в, м, п.

While vowels in the Cyrillic alphabet may be divided into iotated and non-iotated pairs (e.g. <а> and <я>, both represent /a/ and the latter denotes a preceding palatalized consonant), <ы> is more complicated; while it appears only after hard consonants, its phonetic value differs from <и> and there is some scholarly disagreement as to whether or not <ы> and <и> denote different phonemes.

Like many Cyrillic letters, originally the letter yery was formed from a ligature ꙑ—formed from Yer <ъ> and <і> (formerly written either dotless or with two dots) or Izhe (<и>, whose former letterform resembled н). In medieval manuscripts, it is almost without exception found as <ъі> or <ъи>. Once the letters <ъ> and <ь> subsequently lost their values as vowels in the Slavic languages, the current simplified form <ы> evolved.

The letter Yery in several fonts

The letter is usually Romanized in English and most other West-European languages as <y>, e.g. Krylov (family name, Крылов), although it may be used for other purposes as well (in combinations), this spelling matches Polish where Latin <y> represents the same sound, Russian <ы> is used to transliterate Polish words with <y> into Cyrillic (e.g. Maryla - Марыля).

There are several proper and common nouns of non-Russian origin (including some geographical names in Russia) that begin with this letter: Ytyk-Kyuyol (Ытык-Кюёль), Ygyatta (Ыгыатта), a village and a river in Sakha (Yakutia) Republic respectively, and Eulji Mundeok (Ыльчи Мундок), a Korean military leader, though these are generally pronounced as if they were spelled with <и>.^{[citation needed]}

In the Ukrainian alphabet, the sound similar to Russian <ы> is denoted by <и>, and the Russian sound <и> is denoted by .