"Izhitsa" is a sign from the Old Slavonic alphabet

When you read classical literature, sometimes you find words that are not known. In addition, many of them for the first time you hear. This is not surprising, because the Russian language, like any other in the world, is quite dynamic, every year new words appear in it, while others are out of use. So it happened with the word "izhitsa". This word can be found in Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol in his work "A Tale of how Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich."

Value

Many people know about the existence of the Old Slavonic alphabet, which was the first Cyrillic alphabet and consisted of 45 letters. Initially, it was formed in the 9th century for the transmission of information in the Old Church Slavonic and Church Slavonic languages.

So, Izhitsa is a letter from this alphabet, which later was also in the pre-reform Russian alphabet. We can assume that the named sign was born thanks to another - Ipsilon, which is now in the Greek alphabet. Izhitsa was used in Russian to denote the modern letter "and". And also sometimes met in the words of the Greek language.

Display

The word "izhytsa" had a huge number of variants of the inscription. This letter was portrayed in different ways: it looked like a modern "y", it was like a figure 8 with a cut off crown. Its numerical value in the Old Slavonic language is 400.

Izhitsu was rarely used both in ancient writing, and in the 19-20 century. Sometimes it had a value of "y". If it was used with "o", then it was just the meaning of the modern letter "y". And initially this combination was at all like "ou", when there was not enough space, "y" was sent to the top of "o", thus it turned out that famous sign, similar to the cut number. 8.

Transformation

Izhitsa - this is the letter that many times tried to restore, and then again "destroy". So it was in the 14th century. Then it was decided to restore this sign, more precisely its Greek copy - ipsilon. At that time, the letter loses the "lower tail" and therefore becomes modified. By the way, it is the last version of Izhitsa that can now be found in church books.

Reading

The correct reading of the Izhinsky at that time was difficult to determine. Depending on the combination with other signs, it could be read as "and", "y" and even "in". Also formally, the presence of a superscript element influenced the reading of this sign. If there is an accent above the sign, it is a vowel "and", if there is nothing, then the consonant "in".

It was also often possible to meet the use of kendem or diarrhea. These elements came from the Greek language. But it should be noted that even with this, the signs could not be independent elements of the alphabet.

Russian language

In Russian, Izhitsa is a letter that came after the church alphabet and into the Russian alphabet. This happened under Peter I. Just in the early 1700's. The king introduced a simplified script in which the alphabet got rid of some letters and superscripts. At the same time the izhitsa was canceled.

Within a couple of years it was decided to restore this sign. In 1735, again, she was "buried." And after 23 years again restored. At the end of the 18th century they decided to cancel, and in the beginning of the 19th century to restore again. And although in 1857 the Izhytsu again tried to remove, this sentence was missed "by the ears", since the sign and so rarely met. It was used less and less, sometimes even placed in brackets, indicating the rarity of use.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there was observed some active use of eggs, although only a couple of years. In 1917 there was an orthographic reform, in which this sign was not mentioned at all. But there is a certainty that it was then that the Izhitsu was completely abolished. At least, this is what the Great Soviet Encyclopedia says.

In fact, the letter disappeared gradually, when the civil alphabet of Peter appeared. Some later began to believe that the appearance of the letter "y" is associated just with the izzyce, although there is a suggestion that the mark "U" is not a continuation of "Ѵ, ѵ", but the transformation of "uk".

Other options

About the word "izhytsa" the etymological dictionary of Krylov says that it is the letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, which occupied the 42nd position. It was previously borrowed from the Old Slavonic alphabet. The basis for the formation of this sign was the "yoke". It is also believed that the outline resembles a yoke, which has the shape of an arc and is denoted by the word "yoke".

In addition to the fact that Gogol mentioned the izhytsu, speaking about the form of the mouth of one of the characters of his work, there are also sayings. For example, "registering the izytsu" means punishment by birch.