The letter "ё" entered the Russian alphabet by historical standards recently - 234 years ago. Her appearance in speech and in writing was accompanied by long disputes and protests: the population of the country did not want to get used to the innovation and believed that the pronunciation of the word through “e” was the lot of commoners. How the letter "ё" won its place in the alphabet and entrenched in Russian speech, the site told linguist Alexey Zolotov.

New letter

The birthday of the letter "ё" is November 29, 1783. On that day, the favorite of Catherine II, Princess Ekaterina Dashkova, who headed the Russian Academy of Sciences, held a meeting of academicians of literature. Among those present were the poet Gavrila Derzhavin and the writer Denis Fonvizin.

A new letter appeared in the new alphabet with the light hand of Princess Dashkova. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

When the meeting was already coming to an end, the princess asked the academicians if one of them could write on the board a simple word - “Christmas tree”? The pundits looked at each other in bewilderment, thinking that she was joking. Then Dashkova herself chalked out the word she had spoken: "iolka" - and noticed that it was wrong to represent one sound with two letters at once. Instead of combining two letters - "io" - she suggested using their combined version: "yo". And, so that people do not confuse, Dashkova put two dots at once over the new letter with “i”.

At first, the academicians doubted the expediency of such an innovation, but then they agreed with the arguments of the princess. Since then, they began to use "yo" in correspondence, but the adoption of the new letter by the population was still far away.

"Sign of commoners"

Ordinary people began to use "yo" in writing only at the very end of the 18th century. In 1795, a letter for a new letter was created at the printing house at Moscow University and immediately began to use it for printing documents. The first word printed with the letter "ё" was the word "everything". It was followed by "light", "stump", "cornflower" and others. A year later, Nikolai Karamzin picked up the baton: in his almanac "Aonides" he printed the words "dawn", "eagle", "moth", "tears" and the verb "drip". Thanks to the writer, the letter "went to the people": at first, Karamzin was even considered its author. And two years later, Derzhavin wrote for the first time a surname with the letter "e" - Potemkin.

Despite the fact that the letter began to appear in printed publications, the majority of the population did not want to accept it. “It was believed that noble and cultured people should speak “in a church way” - only through “e,” the linguist explains. - And "yokan" was a sign of commoners, "vile rabble." Among the opponents of the new letter were the writers Sumarokov and Trediakovsky, who never began to write "e". The fight against the “yokane” lasted until the middle of the 19th century.

The obligatory use of the letter "ё" was introduced only in 1942 by order of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR. Only then did she fully enter the Russian alphabet. In the Khrushchev era, the use of the letter became optional due to the simplification of spelling rules. The situation remained unchanged until 2007, when the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation ordered the use of the letter "ё" in cases where it was necessary.

When should you write "yo"?

Currently, the rules for using "yo" are simple. In ordinary texts, it is used at the request of the author, with some exceptions. “You need to write the letter “ё” in proper names, if it is there,” says Zolotov. - For example, if we are talking about a person whose name is Alexei Korolev, his last name should be written only through "e". The use of "e" in this case would be a mistake. The second point: “yo” is written in words, where the meaning depends on the spelling of one letter. For example, as in a pair of words "flight - flight". The first word is derived from "fly", and the second - from "weed". Just one letter, but what a different meaning!

Now in the Russian language there are about 12.5 thousand words with "e", of which 150 words begin with this letter and about 300 words end. In writing, it is found in only 1% of all texts, but surveys and studies confirm that people are not ready to give up the letter “ё”. The majority of the population votes for the preservation of "ё" in the Russian alphabet, and in Ulyanovsk there is even a monument to the letter.

“The letter “yo” adds emotional coloring to speech,” Alexey Zolotov is sure. - Take, for example, the popular exclamation in speech “yo-my” or the phrase “heart skipped a beat”. So “yokaite” to your health!”.

Depardieu or Depardieu? Richelieu, maybe Richelieu? Fet or Fet? Where is the universe, and where is the universe, what deed was perfect, and what was perfect? And how to read "Peter the Great" by A.K. Tolstoy, if we don’t know whether there should be dots over e in the sentence: “Under such a sovereign, let’s take a break!”? The answer is not so obvious, and the expression "dot the I" in Russian could well be replaced by "dot the E".

This letter is replaced when printed with "e", but forced to put dots when writing by hand. But telegrams, radio messages, and Morse code ignore it. It was transferred from the last to the seventh place of the Russian alphabet. And she managed to survive the revolution, unlike, for example, the more ancient "fits" and "Izhitsa".
What difficulties do the owners of surnames with this letter face in the passport offices and it is not necessary to say. Yes, and before the appearance of passport offices, this confusion was - so the poet Athanasius Fet forever remained Fet for us.
Whether this is acceptable or not is up to the reader who has read to the end.

foreign ancestry

The youngest letter of the Russian alphabet "ё" appeared in it on November 29, 1783. It was proposed by Princess Dashkova at a meeting of the Russian Academy to replace the inconvenient combination of IO with a cap, as well as the rarely used signs ё, їô, ió, io.

The very form of the letter is borrowed from French or Swedish, where it is a full member of the alphabet, denoting, however, a different sound.
It is estimated that the frequency of occurrence of Russian Yo is 1% of the text. This is not so little: for every thousand characters (about half a page of printed text), there are on average ten “ё”.
At different times, different options for transmitting this sound in writing were proposed. It was proposed to borrow the symbol from the Scandinavian languages ​​(ö, ø), Greek (ε - epsilon), simplify the superscript symbol (ē, ĕ), etc.

Path to the alphabet

Despite the fact that Dashkova proposed this letter, Derzhavin is considered its father in Russian literature. It was he who was the first to use a new letter in correspondence, and also the first to print a surname with an “ё”: Potemkin. At the same time, Ivan Dmitriev published the book “And my knick-knacks”, imprinting all the necessary points in it. But the “ё” acquired the final weight after N.M. Karamzin - an authoritative author - in the first almanac he published "Aonides" (1796) printed: "dawn", "eagle", "moth", "tears", as well as the first verb - "drip". True, in his famous "History of the Russian State" "yo" did not find a place for itself.
And yet, the letter "ё" was in no hurry to officially introduce into the Russian alphabet. Many were embarrassed by the “yoking” pronunciation, because it was too similar to “servile”, “low”, while the solemn Church Slavonic language ordered to pronounce (and, accordingly, write) “e” everywhere. Ideas about culture, nobility and intelligence could not come to terms with a strange innovation - two dots above the letter.
As a result, the letter "ё" entered the alphabet only in Soviet times, when no one was trying to show off intelligence. Yo could be used in the text or replaced by "e" at the request of the writer.

Stalin and maps of the area

In a new way, the letter "e" was looked at in the military of the 1940s. According to legend, I. Stalin himself influenced her fate by ordering the obligatory printing of “yo” in all books, central newspapers and maps of the area. This happened because German maps of the area fell into the hands of Russian intelligence officers, which turned out to be more accurate and “meticulous” than ours. Where the pronunciation of "yo" was "jo" in these cards - that is, the transcription was extremely accurate. And on Russian maps they wrote the usual “e” everywhere, and the villages with the names “Berezovka” and “Berezovka” could easily be confused. According to another version, in 1942, Stalin was brought an order for signature, in which the names of all the generals were written with an “e”. The leader was furious, and the next day the entire issue of the Pravda newspaper was full of superscripts.

Torment of typists

But as soon as control weakened, the texts rapidly began to lose their "ё". Now, in the era of computer technology, it is difficult to guess the reasons for this phenomenon, because they are ... technical. On most typewriters, there was no separate letter “ё”, and typists had to contrive, doing unnecessary actions: type “e”, return the carriage, put a quotation mark. Thus, for each "ё" they pressed three keys - which, of course, was not very convenient.
Handwriters also spoke of similar difficulties, and in 1951 A. B. Shapiro wrote:
“... The use of the letter ё has not received any wide distribution in the press to date and even in the most recent years. This cannot be considered a random occurrence. ... The very form of the letter ё (a letter and two dots above it) is an undoubted difficulty from the point of view of the motor activity of the writer: after all, writing this frequently used letter requires three separate techniques (letter, dot and dot), and each time you need to follow so that the dots are symmetrically placed above the sign of the letter. ... In the general system of Russian writing, which almost does not know superscripts (the letter й has a simpler superscript than ё), the letter ё is a very burdensome and, apparently, therefore not sympathetic exception.

Esoteric controversy

Disputes about "ё" do not stop until now, and the arguments of the parties sometimes surprise with their unexpectedness. So, supporters of the widespread use of this letter sometimes build their argument on ... esotericism. They believe that this letter has the status of "one of the symbols of Russian life", and therefore the rejection of it is a disregard for the Russian language and Russia. “A spelling mistake, a political mistake, a spiritual and moral mistake” calls the spelling e instead of e the writer V.T. Proponents of this point of view believe that 33 - the number of letters of the Russian alphabet - is a sacred number, and "yo" occupies the sacred 7th place in the alphabet.
“And until 1917, the letter Zh was blasphemously placed in the sacred seventh place of the 35-letter alphabet,” their opponents answer. They believe that the "e" should be dotted only in a few cases: "in cases of possible discrepancies; in dictionaries; in books for students of the Russian language (i.e. children and foreigners); for the correct reading of rare toponyms, names or surnames. In general, it is these rules that are now in effect with regard to the letter “e”.

Lenin and "yo"

There was a special rule about how the patronymic of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin should be written. In the instrumental case, it was mandatory to write Ilyich, while every other Ilyich of the Soviet Union after 1956 was prescribed to be called only Ilyich. The letter Yo singled out the leader and emphasized his uniqueness. Interestingly, this rule has never been canceled in the documents.
A monument to this cunning letter stands in Ulyanovsk, the hometown of Nikolai Karamzin's "yofikator". Russian artists came up with a special badge - "epirayt" - for marking certified publications, and Russian programmers - "etator" - a computer program that automatically places a letter with dots in your text.

History of the letter Yoyo

November 29, 2013 the letter Yo turns 230 years old!

Russian alphabetconsists of thirty three letters. One of them stands somewhat apart from the general row. Firstly, she is the only one among her colleagues who has dots on top. Secondly, she was introduced into an already existing alphabet in order.

This is a letter Her.

The history of the letter began in 1783 year.November twenty ninth 1783, one of the first meetings of the newly created Academy of Russian Literature took place with the participation of its director - Princess Ekaterina Dashkova, as well as well-known writers Fonvizin and Derzhavin. Ekaterina Romanovna proposed to replace the two-letter designation of the sound "io" in the domestic alphabet with one new letter "E" with two dots on top. Arguments Dashkova seemed convincing to the academicians, and soon her proposal was approved by the general meeting of the Academy.

A well-known new letter yo became thanks to the historian N.M. Karamzin. In 1797, Nikolai Mikhailovich decided to replace two letters in the word “sl io zy" for one letter e. Yes, lightly Karamzin, the letter "ё" took its place under the sun and was fixed in the Russian alphabet. Due to the fact that N.M. Karamzin was the first to use the letter ё in a printed publication, which was published in a fairly large circulation, some sources, in particular, the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, it is he who is erroneously indicated as the author of the letter ё.

The Bolsheviks, having come to power, "scrambled" the alphabet, removed the "yat" and fita and Izhitsu, but did not touch the letter Yo. It was under Soviet rule that the dots over yo in order to simplify typing disappeared in most words. Although formally no one forbade or abolished it.

The situation changed dramatically in 1942. Supreme Commander-in-Chief Stalin received German maps on the table, in which German cartographers entered the names of our settlements to the point. If the village was called "Demino", then Demino (and not Demino) was written in both Russian and German. The Supreme appreciated the enemy's meticulousness. As a result, on December 24, 1942, a decree was issued prescribing the mandatory use of the letter Yё everywhere, from school textbooks to the Pravda newspaper. Well, of course, on the cards. By the way, no one has ever canceled this order!

Some statistics

In 2013, the letter Yoyo turns 230 years old!

She stands at the 7th (lucky!) place in the alphabet.

In Russian, there are about 12,500 words with the letter ё, of which about 150 words begin with it and about 300 words end with ё!

For every hundred characters of text, there is an average of 1 letter ё. .

There are words in our language with two letters Ё: “three-star”, “four-bucket”.

In Russian, there are several traditional names in which the letter Y is present:

Artyom, Parmen, Peter, Savel, Seliverst, Semyon, Fedor, Yarem; Alena, Matryona, Thekla and others.

Optional use letters ё leads to erroneous readings and the inability to restore the meaning of the word without additional explanations, for example:

Loan-loan; perfect-perfect; tears-tears; sky-sky; chalk-chalk; donkey donkey; merry merry...

And, of course, a classic example from "Peter the Great" by A.K. Tolstoy:

Under such a sovereign take a break!

It was meant - " let's take a break". Feel the difference?

And how do you read "We'll Sing"? Do we all eat? Do we eat everything?

And the name of the French actor will be Depardieu, not Depardieu. (see Wikipedia)

And, by the way, A. Dumas has the name of the cardinal not Richelieu at all, but Richelieu. (see Wikipedia)

And it is necessary to pronounce the name of the Russian poet correctly Fet, not Fet.

Interesting expressions from Russian speech:

The expression “not every bast in a line” is, as it were, understandable, but not for every modern

word tocsin attributed to Arabic (or Turkic?) origin. With this word

The expression "our regiment has arrived" is direct action. Means simply "ours"

In fact, Suvorov called his instructions (formulated in the form of a manuscript for

The expression "to be out of your element" means to feel awkward, uncomfortable,

The expression "in seventh heaven" is usually used with the verb to be

Since ancient times (to this day) nuts have been a favorite delicacy of children.

Climbing on the wall- talk about those who are in an extremely excited or state

Incense is the common name for incense that smoked not only in front of the altars

An interesting expression scapegoat. The phrase is unsaid, but everything is fine

An interesting expression is to buy a pig in a poke. It can be classified as intuitive

The nightingale is the most pleasant songbird living in the vastness of Russia. Why of all

Kuzka's mother(or show Kuz'kin's mother) - a stable phrase of indirect

Expression mutual responsibility is an expression of direct meaning, that is, it means that

This expression - squaring the circle you must have seen it somewhere. And that's what it is

The expression in all Ivanovo, more precisely, yelling in all Ivanovo, is known very

This letter boasts that the date of its birth is known. Namely, on November 29, 1783, in the house of Princess Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova, who at that time was the director of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, a meeting of the Academy of Literature, created shortly before that date, was held. Present at that time were G. R. Derzhavin, D. I. Fonvizin, Ya. B. Knyazhnin, Metropolitan Gabriel, and others. Toward the end of the meeting, Dashkova happened to write the word “olka.” So the princess asked to the point: is it right to represent one sound with two letters? And wouldn't it be better to introduce a new letter "ё"? Dashkova's arguments seemed convincing enough to the Academicians, and after some time her proposal was approved by the general meeting.

The image of the new letter was probably borrowed from the French alphabet. A similar letter is used, for example, in writing the car brand Citroën, although it sounds completely different in this word. Cultural figures supported the idea of ​​Dashkova, the letter took root. Derzhavin began to use the letter ё in personal correspondence and for the first time used it when writing a 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 knick-knacks". The first word, over which two dots 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 the poetic almanac “Aonides” (1796) published by him 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, L.N. Tolstoy in his "New ABC" sent it to the 31st place, between the yat and the letter e. But the use of this symbol in typographic and publishing was associated with some difficulties due to its non-standard height. Therefore, officially the letter ё entered the alphabet and received serial number 7 only in Soviet times - on December 24, 1942. However, for many decades publishers continued to use it only in case of emergency, and even then mainly in encyclopedias. As a result, the letter “e” disappeared from the spelling (and then the pronunciation) of many surnames: Cardinal Richelieu, philosopher Montesquieu, poet Robert Burns, microbiologist and chemist Louis Pasteur, mathematician Pafnuty Chebyshev (in the latter case, the place of stress even changed: Chebyshev; exactly the beets became beets). We speak 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, Koenigsberg, Cologne, etc. See, for example, the epigram on Lev Pushkin (authorship is not exactly clear):
Our friend Pushkin Lev
Not devoid of reason
But with champagne fat pilaf
And duck with milk mushrooms
They will prove to us better than words
that he is healthier
The power of the stomach.

Often the letter "e", on the contrary, is inserted into words in which it is not needed. For example, "scam" instead of "scam", "being" instead of "being", "guardianship" instead of "guardianship". The first Russian world chess champion was actually called Alexander Alekhin and was very indignant when his noble name was spelled incorrectly, "commonly" - Alekhin. In general, the letter "ё" is contained in more than 12 thousand words, in about 2.5 thousand names of citizens of Russia and the former USSR, in thousands of geographical names.
The categorical opponent of the use of this letter when writing is designer Artemy Lebedev. For some reason she didn't like him. I must say that on the computer keyboard it is really located inconveniently. Of course, it is possible to do without it, as, for example, the text will be understandable, even if it does not contain all glans 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 their brainchild a name from this one letter.

Introduction

In the development of the culture and language of the people, writing is of particular importance. One of the fundamental stages of its development is the emergence of the alphabet.

Our Russian alphabet consists of thirty-three letters and one of them stands a little apart from the general row. Firstly, it is the only one among all other letters that has dots on top, and secondly, it was introduced into the current alphabet in order.

This is the letter Y.

The purpose of my essay: to explore the history of the letter Yo and explain its necessity in our alphabet.

1. Get acquainted with the history of the letter Yo and its appearance in the Russian alphabet.

2. Track its use in various written sources (legal, artistic, official, educational).

3. Research scientific linguistic articles that contain data on this topic.

4. Find out the arguments of supporters and opponents of the letter Y.

Research methods:

1) Review and analysis of texts for the use of the letter Y.

2) Study and systematization of popular science and scientific articles.

3) Analysis of the information received by me.

The relevance of this problem is great because recently there have been more frequent cases associated with the use of the letters Yo and E.

The absence of two dots above E entails a violation of not only the cognitive and communicative functions of the language, but also material problems, such as refusal to issue certificates and documents, non-payment of benefits, and the like.

The history of the creation of the letter Yo

In Russia, until the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th century, Church Slavonic was considered the main literary pronunciation, where exactly the sound YO was not. He appeared later "from the people."

The modern civil alphabet was introduced by Peter I. Since this alphabet was compiled by the monarch of all Russia himself, no one had any questions about the "y", "e", "u", "c" introduced by him, but appeared in In Russian pronunciation, the combination of sounds (and [o] after soft consonants) was not expressed in writing for a long time. Only in the middle of the 18th century was the designation introduced for them in the form of the letters IO under one cap. But this method turned out to be cumbersome and was used very rarely.

On November 29, 1783, one of the first meetings of the newly created Academy of Russian Literature took place. The meeting was attended by its director, Princess Dashkova Ekaterina Romanovna, as well as Derzhavin G. R., Fonvizin D. I., Lepekhin I. I., Knyazhnin Ya. B., Metropolitan Gabriel and others. explanatory Slavic-Russian dictionary, later famous 6-volume Dictionary of the Russian Academy. At the end of the meeting, Ekaterina Romanovna asked those present to write the word “tree” and, seeing that same “tree”, asked: “Is it right to represent one sound with two letters?” Adding that “these pronunciations have already been introduced by custom, which, when it does not contradict common sense, must be followed in every possible way,” she proposed replacing the previous designation of the “io” sound in the domestic alphabet with just one new letter “Ё”. The arguments given by Dashkova in favor of such an innovation seemed convincing to the academicians, and her proposal was accepted. Due to the high cost of creating new characters, the letter YO was not included in the new dictionary. Derzhavin G. R. supported the idea itself and gradually began to implement it. He was the first to use Yo in personal correspondence. The first word written with the letter Yo was “everything”, then “cornflower”, “immortal”, “stump”, “light”.

Since the beginning of 1795, the letter Ё began to be used in print, but linguistic conservatism still prevented the promotion of the young letter among the masses. So, one of the famous examples of "linguistic conservatism" was Marina Tsvetaeva. She basically used the word "devil", and the poet Andrei Bely - "yellow". The Minister of Education Alexander Shishkov treated the letter Yo with greater hatred. In all the books he owned, he erased the two dots that irritated him. In all pre-revolutionary primers, Yo stood at the very end of the alphabet, and not after E as it is now.

The letter Yo gained fame thanks to Karamzin Nikolai Mikhailovich. In 1796, in the poetic almanac "Aonides" published by Karamzin, with the letter "Yo" such words as "tears", "eagle", "dawn", "moth" and the first verb "drip" were printed. But it is not known for certain whether this was Karamzin's own idea or, perhaps, the initiative of one of the publishing house employees who helped Karamzin. Moreover, in scientific works (for example, in the "History of the Russian State", 1816-1829), Karamzin did not use the letter "Yo".

The letter Yo was rarely used and only in those cases when it was necessary to clarify the meaning of a word or a whole sentence, as well as when writing, for example, foreign names and names. The lack of basic rules made the use of the letter optional throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. There were long trials regarding its use, but the 20th century brought its own adjustments to the problem of using the letter Y. In 1917, a decree was issued, signed by Lunacharsky A.V., which contained a resolution to recognize as desirable, albeit optional, the use of the letter Yo.

As a result, a century passed before the letter again began to be sometimes mentioned in official documents and resolutions.

The main "flourishing" of the use of the letter Yo fell on the reign of Stalin. There is a legend that it was he who promoted the letter Y. Although no evidence was found, they say that Stalin was very strict with the Manager of the Affairs of the Council of People's Commissars, Yakov Chadayev, because on December 5, 1942, he submitted a decree to him for signature, where the names of several generals were printed without the letter Y. Having received a severe reprimand, Chadaev warned the editor of the Pravda newspaper about the leader’s insistence on using the letter Y in print. And, in the issue of December 7, 1942, Y appeared in all articles. the headline was: “Workers, Collective Farmers, Soviet Intelligentsia! Strengthen aid to the front by selfless labor! Sacredly fulfill your civic duty to the motherland and its valiant defenders at the front! And below the heading is a resolution on conferring the rank of generals, signed by the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars I. Stalin and the Director of Affairs of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR Ya. Chadayev. In all the names of the generals, the letter Yo stood in its place.

On December 24, 1942, the People's Commissar of Education Potemkin published an order to introduce the use of the letter Yo in the school curriculum. A special reference book "The use of the letter Yo" was published, compiled by Nikolsky N.N. The authors of school textbooks replaced the letter E with Y in the works of Russian classics. In 1956, the first textbook "Rules of Russian Spelling and Punctuation" was approved, the authors of which for some reason ignored Potemkin's order.