How to write comrade in pre-revolutionary Russian. Summary of differences between the old spelling and the new

To write texts correctly in old spelling, you need to know not only which of the letters denoting the same sound to write - i or i, f or f, e or ѣ - and be able to place ers at the ends of words; but also know a bunch of other things. For example, distinguish between the words “her” and “hers”, “they” and “one”; the end of the th ( dear, one, whom) and -ago/-ago ( separate, samago, blue); know when the ending is written e ( voiced and voiceless), and when - I ( lowercase and uppercase).

But nevertheless, Lebedev was right that the most difficult thing to learn is when it is written ѣ (yat).

The correct use of the letter yat was available only to those who knew everything similar words by heart. Of course, there were all sorts of rules. For example: if the right word put in the plural with an emphasis on e and get е, then there is no need to write yat (oar - oars, broom - brooms).
It is probably impossible to know all the words by heart. Generally speaking, even a dictionary at hand will not save you: the words there go in initial form, and the letter e or ѣ can appear in a word only in some cunning forms: end - at the end. Even if the spelling is in the root, and the same root word could be found in the dictionary, do not forget that there are roots in which the spelling is not stable: dress, but clothes. In addition, the word can be written with e or ѣ depending on the meaning: there is and there is, blue and blue.

To spell a word correctly, you often need to understand its morphology.

I tried to create a kind of “checklist” that would allow me to quickly check a significant part of the spellings in e and ѣ, without turning to the dictionary.

Declension of nouns

The easiest thing to remember is that in the endings indirect cases nouns last letter It is always written ѣ: table - about the table.

If we approach the question formally, then it is written:

  1. In the endings of the prepositional case of nouns of the first declension: stump - about stump, custom - about custom, field - about field.
  2. In the endings of the dative and prepositional cases of nouns of the second declension: fish - fish - about fish.
Note that "vocative" is not indirect; in its endings it is written e: father - father, Iesus - Iesus.

In the case endings of words the so-called. the fourth declension (in -mya) is not written: time - time, seed - seed. Here the spelling misses the last letter.

Noun suffixes

ѣ is never written in noun suffixes:
witness, reaper, barrel, fire, letter, uncle, time, hut
You need to be careful with this rule: not every suffix found in a noun is noun suffix:
Your Holiness
On the other hand, this rule applies not only to nouns, because adjectives can also have these suffixes:
delightful, Mash-enk-in

Adjectives

Suffixes of adjectives in which e is written: -ev- (cherry), -enny, -enniy (vital, morning), -evat- (reddish), -en-skiy (presnensky).

Adjectives in magnifying, diminutive and endearing forms end with -ekhonek, -eshenek, -okhonek, -oshenek, -evaty, -enkiy; in these parts ѣ is not written: small - small, wet - wet.

Adjectives in comparative degree end with ee, ey, and in the superlative - with еshiy, еishaya, еѣеѣе, аishe:

white - whiter - whitest
If at the end of the comparative degree one sound e is heard, then e is written: Words like more, less, used instead of full forms more, less.

Adjectives ending in -ov, -ev, -yn, -in (and the same ones with the letter o instead of ъ) prepositional case singular masculine and neuter gender in ѣ, when they are used in the meaning of proper names: Ivanov - about Ivanov, Tsaritsyno - in Tsaritsyno.

Pronouns

Ѣ is written at the endings of personal pronouns I, You, myself in dative and prepositional cases:
me, you, myself
about me, about you, about yourself
ѣ is also written in pronouns:
  • all (and in declension: all, all, all...);
  • all, everything - only in the instrumental case: to all (in the form female“all” is even written in the instrumental case e: all);
  • te (and in declension: tekh, tem...);
  • one (plural of she);
  • that, that - in the instrumental case: that;
  • who, what, no one, nothing - only in the instrumental case: by whom, by what, by no one, by nothing (in contrast to the genitive and dative cases: what, what, nothing, nothing);
  • someone, something, some, some, several.
Pay attention to the first and second lines in this list: “everything” is “everything”, and “everything” is “everything” (more about it - just below).

The pronoun “whose” is written e in all forms.

Verbs, participles

Before the end of the indefinite mood it is written ѣ: to see, to hang. Exceptions: rub, grind, measure, stretch.

Verbs with such ѣ retain it in all forms formed from the stem of the indefinite mood, including other parts of speech:

see, saw, seen, seen, vision
If such is from indeterminate form is preserved in the 1st person of the present or future tense, then it is preserved in the remaining persons singular and plural, as well as in imperative mood:
warm - warm,
warm, warm, warm
If the preceding consonant d or t in the past participle is replaced by zh or h, then the suffix n is added using the vowel e:
offend - offended, twirl - twirled
In forms of the verb to be it is written e: I am; you are; he, she, it is; we are; you are (they, they are).

In the verb eat (in the sense of eating food) it is written ѣ: I eat; you eat; he, she, it eats; we eat; you are eating; they, they eat. The word food is also written with ѣ.

Here you can see that in the verbal ending -those of the second person plural written e: you read, share, dress. The same thing is in the imperative mood: read, share, dress.

Neuter participles have the ending -ee: reading-ee, sharing-ee, dressing-ee; read it, shared it, dressed it. IN passive form the ending -oe appears: read-oe, read-oe.

Numerals

Ѣ is written in feminine numerals: two, both, one. In this case, the letter ѣ is preserved when words are changed by case: both, one. Also: twelve, two hundred.

Ѣ and ё

In general, if, when changing a word, where e was heard, е is heard, ѣ is not written - Lebedev mentioned this rule in his paragraph. There are many exceptions to this rule:
nests, stars, bear, saddles, bending, sweep, vezhka, pole, found, blossomed, yawn, put on, imprinted.
I will note, at the same time, that the old rules regarding the letter e were stricter than modern ones, and sounded like this: “Where you hear [yo], you should write e.” In the case of the words “everything” and “everyone,” there was not even a discrepancy in reading: in the word where e is heard, the letter e was written.

True, in the 1901 edition of the book that came into my hands, the letter e was still printed in proper names: Goethe, Körner.

Other vowel changes

In addition to checking for the occurrence of ё in other forms of the word, there are other checks.

It is written e if when changing the word:

  • the sound falls out/appears: father - father, merchant - merchant, take - I take;
  • the sound is reduced to b: ill - sick, zverek - zverka;
  • the sound is shortened to th: loan - borrow, taiga - taiga;
  • the sound turns into and: shine - shine, die - die.
It is written ѣ if, when the word changes, the sound turns into a: climb - climb, sit down - sit down;

The alternation of e and ѣ is observed in the following cases: dress - clothes, put on - hope, adverb - saying.

Consonants after which e is written at the root

After the consonants g, k, x, zh, h, sh, sch in the roots words are written e: tin, wool. The exception is the word fuck.

conclusions

If you systematize all the rules about the letter ѣ, then they cease to seem completely overwhelmingly complex. Some of these rules, for example, about prepositional endings nouns or degrees of comparison of adjectives, are extremely simple, and are remembered the first time.

This allows you to avoid having to wonder about correct spelling in a significant proportion of cases.

By the way, it’s not harmful to know that “yat” is a word male, that is, yat is he, not she.

Difficult to write letters were replaced with a civilian font. These are the letters with minor changes we are using now. A new civil alphabet was written.

But in 1918 another one was produced language reform, which changed the pre-revolutionary Russian language and transformed it into a modern one. What was this reform? What was the pre-revolutionary language in Russia? How was it different from the modern one?

Features of the pre-revolutionary language

The pre-reform alphabet of the Russian language consisted of 35 letters, the modern alphabet - 33.

The alphabet of the pre-revolutionary language included the letters “i” - “i”, “fita” - “ѳ”, “izhitsa” - “ѵ”, “yat” - “ѣ”, but there were no modern “th” and “e”.

The letter “Izhitsa” was not officially abolished; the Decree on Spelling Reform did not say anything about it; it was not remembered, since it was practically no longer used.

Features of the pronunciation of letters in the pre-reform Russian language

Initially they used church names: “az”, “buki”, “vedi”, “verb” and so on. From the end of the 18th century, letters began to be named after Latin ones, and by the end of the 19th century, new names were formed that completely replaced the old ones. The new names of the letters practically coincided with the modern ones, but after the consonants in their names there was not “e” but “e”, for example “be”, “ve”, “ge” and so on, with the exception of the letters “ь” (er), “y” (er), “b” (er), “yati”, “izhitsa” and “fity”. The letter “i” was called “and octal”, and “i” was called “and decimal”, this corresponded to their numerical value in the Church Slavonic alphabet.

The letters “e” and “y” were not included in the alphabet of the pre-revolutionary language only formally, but were used in the same way as now. The letter "th" was called "and with short".

As a result of the reform of the Russian alphabet, “yat”, “fita”, “izhitsa” and “er” (at the end of the word) were excluded from it. What are these letters and why were they removed from the pre-reform alphabet?

"Yat"

The letter is very similar to the symbol that astronomers use to mark the planet Saturn. The letters “ҍ” and “e” were pronounced exactly the same, for example, “wind” and “evening”, but in the word “wind” they wrote “yat”, and in the word “evening” - “e”. This caused enormous difficulties. The letter “yat” was considered the most terrible in the alphabet. Students mechanically memorized the rules for “yat”; mistakes when writing this letter were considered the most serious. Since then, the expression “to know in yat” has developed, which means “very good.”

"Izhitsa"

The letter “Izhitsa” in the alphabet of the pre-revolutionary language was very similar to the Roman numeral “five”. To our ancestors it resembled an inverted whip, which is why the common people had the expression “prescribe Izhitsa,” which meant “give a strong scolding” or “flog.” The letter also caused a lot of inconvenience and made life difficult for students, for example, three words:

  • world - meaning “universe”;
  • peace - “calmness, silence”;
  • myrrh is a fragrant substance.

It would seem that the words are pronounced the same, but they are written differently:

  • in the first word they wrote “and with a dot” - peace;
  • in the second - “and” - world;
  • in the third - “Izhitsa” - miro.

There were many difficulties; many were confused about the rules for writing certain words. Also Pushkin A.S. in 1818 he believed that “Izhitsa” should be abolished, but it was abolished only in 1918.

"Fita"

The modern letter “f” and the pre-revolutionary “fita - ѳ” were in the alphabet in different places, but were pronounced exactly the same. For example, in the pre-revolutionary address directory, people with the surname Fedorov were not placed together, since some were written with the letter “f”, and others with “fita”. Why is that? Trediakovsky V. in 1748 in his article “Conversation about Spelling” explained this by saying that you shouldn’t think at all about where you need to write “f” and where “fitu”, it doesn’t matter, since not everyone studied Latin and Greek languages, and without knowledge of these languages ​​it is impossible to know the difference in these letters. That’s how they wrote it, whatever they want, because still few people understand how to do it correctly.

"Er"

This is the so-called solid sign. Currently it is considered very useful letter, separates the consonant of the prefix from the vowel (entrance, rise). And before the reform, the hard sign was written after hard consonants at the end of all words, for example, oak, rode, dom. "Er" was popularly called a "parasite", "idler", "bloodsucker". In fact, the letter that was written at the end of almost every word consumed, according to scientists, 8% of paper and time. For example, Uspensky L. in the book “A Word about Words” wrote that in one edition of the book (in pre-revolutionary language) “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy. on 2080 pages there were about 115 thousand “er”. If they were all put together and printed in a row, they would take up more than 70 pages. And if you calculate that typing a novel required about 100 working days, then it would take about 4 days for a typist to type only this letter. How much paper was spent on it? It's generally difficult to say. "Er" was the most expensive letter in the world.

Pre-revolutionary language in modern Russia

The fashion for the pre-reform Russian language re-emerged during the perestroika period and in the early 90s. At that time, a lot of pre-revolutionary literature was published, and it was published according to the rules of the old spelling. Websites began to appear on the Internet, completely typed in the old spelling, and articles and publications began to be published.

It has become fashionable to use elements of pre-reform spelling of words in advertising and on signs (and with errors).

Very often, “creative” sign designers followed simple principle, without thinking about spelling rules, they simply added the letter “ъ” to the end of the word. This is how newfangled signs appeared, on which in those days they could write “Izhitsa”, for example, for many years the logo “Capital Savings Bank” was displayed on all signs and advertising brochures, although the correct spelling would have been “Capital Savings Bank”. And, unfortunately, there are a lot of such examples.

Fashion has returned, but literacy has not.

They refer specifically to the last stable 50th anniversary of existence pre-reform spelling.

Encyclopedic YouTube

  • 1 / 5

    Thus, for the sound [f] there were two letters - “f” and “ѳ”, for the sound combination [y'e] and the designation of the sound [e] along with the softness of the consonant in front of it, there were also two letters - “e” and “ ѣ”, and for the sound [and] - three letters - “i”, “i” and “ѵ”.

    Rules for using abolished letters

    Letter

    Used before vowels (including before “y”, which was considered a vowel: “kiy”, “killer”), as well as in the word “mir” with the meaning “universe”, to distinguish it from the word “peace” - the absence of war. According to folk etymology they also wrote “Vladimir”, but academician Grot prescribed to write “Vladimir”. The only exceptions were complex words, the first part of which ended in “and”: “five-arshin”, “seven-story”, “octagon”, “most terrible”, “from nowhere”, etc.

    Letter

    Written at the end of words after consonants (including soft ones - doctor, ivy etc., but excluding “th”, which was considered a vowel - May, howl etc.) and was not read (as opposed to “b” at the end of words, which softens consonant sounds), and also in some cases after prefixes before unotated vowels and “and”, for example, in the word otexam. Occurs in the word supersensitive. In a word narrow Grotto ordered “b” not to be used. When writing words with a hyphen - in the usual common words “ъ” was preserved: because of, rear admiral, and when writing borrowed names, “ъ” before the hyphen could be omitted. (Omitting the “ъ” before the hyphen is Grot’s wish.)

    Letter

    Poems with ѣ

    White, pale, poor demon
    The hungry man ran away into the forest.
    He ran through the woods,
    Had radish and horseradish for lunch
    And for that bitter dinner
    I vowed to cause trouble.

    Know, brother, that cage and cage,
    Sieve, lattice, mesh,
    Vezha and iron with yat, -
    This is how it should be written.

    Our eyelids and eyelashes
    The pupils protect the eyes,
    Eyelids squint for a whole century
    At night, every person...

    The wind broke the branches,
    The German knitted brooms,
    Hanged correctly when changing,
    I sold it for two hryvnia in Vienna.

    Dnieper and Dniester, as everyone knows,
    Two rivers in close proximity,
    The Bug divides their regions,
    It cuts from north to south.

    Who is angry and furious there?
    Do you dare to complain so loudly?
    We need to resolve the dispute peacefully
    And convince each other...

    It’s a sin to open up bird’s nests,
    It’s a sin to waste bread in vain,
    It’s a sin to laugh at a cripple,
    To mock the crippled...

    Prof. N.K. Kulman. Methodology of the Russian language. - 3rd ed. - St. Petersburg. : published by Y. Bashmakov and Co., 1914. - P. 182.

    Form verb "to be" in the 3rd person singular it was written with the letter “ ” - in contrast to the verb “Pattern: Unicode” (“to eat”). The spelling of the pair “Template:Unicode” - “all” had a similar meaning: the last word meant "everything".

    To make it easier to learn a list of roots with “ѣ”, special poems were invented (see sidebar).

    Letter

    Used in words that came into Russian (or earlier into Church Slavonic) directly from the Greek language, instead greek letter"θ" (theta). Common words there was little with this letter.

    The letter ѳ is written only in cases where the sound [f] is preserved. If the sound is changed, then the letter is written differently. For example: rhyme And rhythm; Thomas And Tom... And other words in which it is pronounced not [f], but [t]: amethyst(amethystos), antipathy (antipatheia), thesis(thesis), thiophene(thiophen), etc. (Davydov P.I. Handbook of old orthography of the Russian language. M., 2013. P. 94).

    Letter

    Used in the word m ѵ́ ro for its difference from the words mir and mir, and also, according to tradition, in a few more words Greek origin instead of the letter upsilon (like m ѵ ro, these are mainly words related to the church).

    Spelling of individual morphemes (prefixes, case endings)

    • Prefixes ending in -з (iz-, voz-, raz-, roz-, niz-), before the subsequent s, were retained з: story, reason, reconnect. Prefixes without-, through-, through- always had -z at the end: useless, bloodless, tactless, sleepless; too much, beyond the stripe.
    How to find the gender of nouns pluralia tantum(plural only, for example: scissors, gate, dusk), see: Yat in pre-reform Russian orthography in place of the current “i”.
    • In the feminine gender, instead of “they” they wrote (and in some cases pronounced) “one”. (In other genders and when listing words different kinds- "They").
    • In the feminine gender, the words “one”, “one x”, “one m”, “one mi” were also used. (In other genders - “one”, “one”, “one”, “one”).
    • The pronoun “her (her)” in modern Russian can mean three different forms:
      1. pronoun "she" in genitive case: in pre-reform spelling it was written (and in poetry it could be pronounced) as “ee (neya)”
      2. pronoun "she" in accusative case: in pre-reform spelling it was written as “ee (her)”
      3. possessive pronoun (question) whose?): in pre-reform spelling it was written as “ee”
    Example: He took her(whose?) book and gave it away her(book, wine), forever her(give birth, whom?) having lost.

    Foreign words are transferred according to the rules of the grammar of the language from which they are borrowed, unless this contradictsѣ read prosodic dѣ our laziness: Shlag-b aw m, not barrier-um; L wow-ra, not Lu-ara (for au and oi in the words Schlagbaum, Loire are diphthongs); cat-ehizis (κατ-ήχησις), mis- anthrop(μισ-άνθρωπος): not the monarch, Evan-gelie, katihi-zis, mis-zan-trop.

    In the prosodic division of words, it is implied that the consonant standing between two vowels goes to the next syllable, for example, “mo-narkh”.

    Subtleties of spelling

    Spelling and pronunciation

    The combination of letters ьи was pronounced as [ы]. (At the beginning of the 20th century it ceased to be used, but is found in books published earlier). The combination of letters іе was sometimes pronounced as = e: Jehovah, Jerusalem (and [ijerusalem]), Yemen, Jena. The combination of letters іо was sometimes pronounced as = ё, yo: This, major, region. The combination of letters іу was sometimes pronounced as yu: Template:Unicode Julian(But Iuda- Judas). The indicated combinations of vowels with a letter i occur mostly at the beginning of words. The difference in pronunciation before the revolution and now is noticeable only in two cases - Jehovah And Jerusalem(however, the last word could be pronounced the same way as now). Note: in modern Russian in the word yen the first two vowels are also pronounced [је].

    Doubling on a letter

    In the 19th century, many foreign words persisted double spelling. They wrote “literature” “officer”, following the original source language.

    Word abbreviations

    When abbreviating words, dots must be added: S. s.- state councilor, d.s. With.- actual state councilor, t.s.- secret adviser, d.t.s.- actual secret adviser M.V.D.- Ministry of Internal Affairs, Scientist Com.- Scientific Committee, Min. Nar. Etc.- Ministry of Public Education, Aks. General- joint stock company.

    Superscripts

    It was customary to place emphasis on the word “what”, distinguishing between types of words. The accent indicated the pronoun “what” in the nominative or accusative case to distinguish it from the similar conjunction “what”: - You know, What good for you. You know, What teaching is good for you. Also letters e And th were considered options e And And(respectively) with superscripts.

    Punctuation

    Dots were added at the end of the headings. WITH capital letter official ones were written Russian titles Imperial House, as well as addresses (titles): “Sovereign Emperor”, “Medal in memory of the coronation of Their Imperial Majesties”, “Highly approved”, “Yours Imperial Majesty", "Your Honor" (in official documents often all letters of words denoting the Emperor, including pronouns, were typed in capitals). Church titles (bishops) in non-church documents and literature were usually written with a lowercase letter.

    Changes in spelling during the 18th-20th centuries

    XVIII-early XIX century

    In the middle and second half of the 19th century one can still find such spellings as previous, weaned. Academician Grot calls for replacing them with denominative, previous. And at the beginning of the 20th century you will no longer find forms in textbooks “ previous».

    However, not all of Grotto's wishes were implemented in practice. Thus, Grotto prescribed to write hygiene And go. But in practice we met hygiene And hygiene, go And go. (Word go as a variant of the word go also found in Ushakov’s dictionary).

    There were variants of spelling words with the sound [j]: major And major, New York And New York, seriously And seriously and many others.

    There were words with variant spellings in pre-reform spelling a large number of. These are differences in the spelling of some individual words mid-19th century and early 20th century. And also the difference between the spelling of some words of the early 20th century and modern ones.

    By the beginning of the 20th century there were the following words, different from modern spellings: go And go, gallery And gallery, corridor, number, official. Nowadays - go, gallery, corridor, number, official.

    Obsolescence

    Although the decree on the transition to the reformed spelling was issued in December 1917 (effective from January 1, 1918), printing and office work in Soviet Russia were able to switch to the new spelling, mainly only in October 1918 (see .: Reform of Russian spelling 1918 ).

    Old spelling in modern Russia

    During perestroika and in the early 1990s, numerous reprints of pre-revolutionary (sometimes emigrant) literature published according to the old spelling were published in the USSR and Russia. Entire sites appeared on the Internet (in addition to individual texts and collections of publications), entirely typed in the old spelling.

    Elements of pre-reform spelling are used (often with errors) in advertising and on signs.

    The ability to create texts and work with them according to the rules of the old spelling

    There are a number of sites that allow you to type text in the old spelling, print it and save it.

    Symbols of the pre-reform Cyrillic alphabet are supported in the second version of Ilya Birman’s Typographic Layout.

    Computer fonts

    The following fonts support the old spelling:

    Available
    • GNU Unifont
    • Old Standard
    Unfree
    • Palatino Linotype

    Russian pre-reform orthography (often pre-revolutionary orthography) is the orthography of the Russian language that was in force before its reform in 1918 and was later preserved in emigrant publications. The beginning of Russian pre-reform orthography can be considered the introduction civil font under Peter I.

    There was no single generally accepted standard of pre-reform spelling (similar to the Soviet code of 1956). Spelling for the last approximately 50 years before the 1917 revolution (1870s-1910s) was standardized in to a greater extent than the spelling of the first third of the 19th century and especially the 18th century. The most authoritative (although not fully observed in the press published at that time) manuals and sets of rules on Russian pre-reform orthography are associated with the name of academician Yakov Karlovich Grot. They relate specifically to the last stable 50th anniversary of the existence of pre-reform spelling.

    The 1917 reform, announced by the Minister of Education of the Provisional Government, abolished "yat" (replacing it with "e"), "fita" (replacing it with "f"), "izhitsa" and "decimal i" (i), replacing both with "i" "("octal and"). (The replacement of the letter “е” with “e”, adopted in print under the old spelling, remained, i.e. the letter “е” was not introduced.) The silent solid sign(“er”) after final consonants. Forms of nouns and pronouns in “-ago”, “-yago”, “-yya” and some others were abolished. The reform was met with hostility by many cultural figures and, in particular, most emigrant writers (for example, Aldanov, Bunin, Nabokov) and a number of foreign publishing houses continued to publish Russian-language books in the old orthography, some until the 1950s.

    The Bolsheviks, having seized power, supported the reform and actively promoted the new spelling as “more accessible to the people” and “breaking with the legacy of tsarism,” and the old spelling began to be called “tsarist.” This politicized the reform and, of course, did not contribute to the adoption new spelling Russian diaspora abroad. However, the second, more numerous wave of Russian emigration (1945) for the most part did not know the old spelling.

    After 1917, language and spelling, of course, continued to change, naturally and gradually. For example, instead of “exploiter” they began to write “exploiter”, they stopped writing hyphens in combinations like “that is”, “as if”, “the same”, etc.

    Differences between pre-revolutionary spelling and modern

    Alphabet

    Before the revolution, the Russian alphabet had 35, not 33 letters, as it is now. It included the following letters:

    The names of the letters of the Russian pre-reform alphabet: Az, Buki, Vedi, Verb, Dobro, Yes, Live, Earth, Izhe, I (and decimal), Kako, People, Myslete, Our, He, Peace, Rtsy, Word, Firmly, Uk, Fert, Her, Tsy, Worm, Sha, Shcha, Er, Ery, Er, Yat, E, Yu, Ya, Fita, Izhitsa (source: “The Law of God”).

    As you can see, the alphabet included 4 abolished letters , , , , but there were no letters е and й. It is interesting that the letter was not officially abolished; there is no mention of it in the decree on spelling reform.

    The “writings” ё and й were only formally not included in the alphabet, but were used in exactly the same way as now. “Writing” was called “and s short”.

    Pronunciation of abolished letters

    Thus, for the sound [f] there were two letters - f and, for the sound combination [ye] there were also two letters - e and, and for the sound [i] - three letters - i, i and.

    Rules for using abolished letters

    Letter

    Used before vowels (including before “e” (“e”), “”, “yu”, “ya”) and before “y”, as well as in the word “mir” with the meaning “universe”, to distinguish from the word “peace” - peace, silence. According to folk etymology, they also wrote “Vladimir”, but Academician Grot prescribed to write “Vladimir”. The only exceptions were Difficult words, the first part of which ended in “and”: “five-arshin”, “seven-story”, “octagon”, “most terrible”, “from nowhere”, etc.

    Letter

    It was written at the end of words after consonants and was not read, as opposed to b at the end of words, which softens consonant sounds. Also in some cases after prefixes before unioted vowels and And, for example, in the word otexamenovat. Occurs in the word supersensible. In the word suzhit, Grot ordered not to use it. When writing words with a hyphen - in the usual common words ъ was retained: iz-za, rear-admiral. And when writing borrowed names, ъ could be omitted before the hyphen. (Omitting ъ before the hyphen is Grot’s wish).

    Letter

    Used in words that came into Russian (or earlier into Church Slavonic) directly from Greek language instead of the Greek letter θ (theta). There were few commonly used words with this letter.

    Letter

    Used in the word mro to distinguish it from the words mir and mir, and also, according to tradition, in several other words of Greek origin instead of the letter upsilon (like mro, these are mainly words related to the church).

    The following materials were used when writing this article:

    1. http://slovnik.narod.ru/old/pravila/01.html - "Introduction to pre-reform spelling"

    2. http://ru.wikipedia.org/ - "Russian pre-reform spelling"