Cyrillic Small Letter Semisoft Sign

It marks palatalization in Kildin Sámi spelling. The sign usually follows д, т, or н; ь marks palatalization in other spellings. For example, маннҍ means “egg,” while маннь means “daughter-in-law.” The different endings distinguish the words.

The Kildin Sámi writing tradition includes a Gospel of Matthew partly printed in Cyrillic in 1878; that does not establish that this exact sign appeared there. The orthography moved to Latin in the 1930s, returned to Cyrillic in 1937, and was revised in the 1970s–1980s, with the revision accepted in 1982. The changes helped make the spelling system a better fit for teaching and print.

“Semisoft” is not a dependable pronunciation instruction. In one field study, тҍ and дҍ did not differ phonetically from ть and дь in the recorded data, while нҍ and нь did. Writers also used ҍ inconsistently. Read it as a Kildin Sámi spelling cue and let the word guide pronunciation.

Is ҍ the same as the old yat ѣ?

No; they are separate characters with different jobs. The historical Cyrillic yat ѣ represented a vowel. ҍ marks palatalization in Kildin Sámi and is shaped like a soft sign with a stroke. Unicode review documents record that the characters were once considered for unification, but comparison with source materials kept them distinct. Poor printing or substitute fonts can make them look alike.

How do I type ҍ?

Use a Unicode character picker if your keyboard has no key for it. An installed Cyrillic layout may not include this Kildin Sámi sign. For repeated use, set up a custom keyboard layout or text shortcut instead of substituting ь or ѣ.