Words with a firm sign always occupied special place In russian language. The hard sign does not indicate a sound, but is simply a dividing letter. Therefore, they periodically tried to remove it from the alphabet. For example, immediately after the revolution in 1918, it was ordered to remove this letter from all words, replacing it with an apostrophe. As a result, “party congresses” began to be held, and “entrances” appeared in houses. True, in 1928 the government came to its senses and returned the letter to the ranks of the alphabet.
Later, in the 60s, proposals began to be made to leave only the soft sign under the pretext that the hard sign was an extra letter, and the soft sign would simplify the writing rules without losing the quality of pronunciation. But linguists won back the dividing solid sign, proving that they could not correctly convey the phonetic structure in all words.
Let's talk about how to correctly spell words with a separating solid sign. There are very few of these rules. A hard sign is placed only in front of the letters i, yu, e in the following cases:
1. If the prefix ends with a consonant, and the root begins with i, yu, e. Most often, roots are involved in these words Old Russian words: “ride”, “I”, “eat”.
For example: entry, embrace, eat, rise, withdraw.
2. In compound words after prefixes denoting numerals: two-, three- and four-.
For example: quad, double, triple.
3. After the initial particle is super-.
For example: supernatural, super-explanatory.
4. B foreign words after foreign language prefixes: dis-, ad-, in-, con-, inter-, counter-, sub-, trans-, pan-.
For example: panlinguistic, inter-European, subject, injection, conjunction.
Now there are many similar consoles: hyper-, post-, super-. But their list has not been officially expanded since 1965, and such words with a firm sign are not written according to the rules.
Therefore, respected printed publications you can find funny phrases: “post-Steltsin period”, “computer hypercore”, “New Year’s super tree”. What to do in such situations? Of course, it is better to try to replace these casual words with adequate synonyms. Otherwise, the word seems to be written according to the rules, but it looks illogical and funny.
5. Words with a hard sign are found in foreign geographical names and names - mainly in the designations of Far and Middle Eastern transcribed words.
For example: the cities of Hengyang, Toryal, Kizilyurt. Names: Kan'ichi Kuroda.
Previously, they tried to write these words with a hyphen or with a separator soft sign. But then the pronunciation foreign names significantly distorted. Only a firm sign could correct this situation.
The spelling of compound words still causes a lot of controversy. According to the rules of 1965, these words are not written with a hard sign. For example: children, foreign language, state language, marks. This also looks very illogical and often hurts the eyes, but there are no new rules.
True, there have been attempts to introduce the spelling of a fixed sign into words such as inyaz, Inyurkollegiya, economic unit. In addition, some writers used the so-called “author’s spelling” for complex words. For example, in the works of Platonov, published in the 30s, you can find the word “party cell”. But the official recognition of a solid sign in similar words did not follow, so the proofreaders continue to confiscate it to this day.
As we can see, it is difficult to imagine the Russian language without a hard sign. If you do not put this separator, then the phonetic structure of the word is distorted and its syllabic structure is disrupted - and this is already serious. Therefore, now the hard sign confidently takes its position in words not only with traditional Russian prefixes, but also with foreign ones. Next in line is the introduction of a rule about placing a hard sign in compound words, so that the logic of the language no longer has flaws.