The palochka or palotchka () ( rus, палочка, p=ˈpaɫətɕkə, r=palochka, literally "a stick") is a letter in the
Cyrillic script. The letter usually has only a capital form, which is also used in lowercase text. The capital form of the palochka often
looks like the capital form of the
Cyrillic letter soft-dotted ( і), the capital form of the
Latin letter ( i), and the lowercase form of the
Latin letter L (L l). The letter was introduced in the late 1930s.
History
In the early times of the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
, many of the non-Russian Cyrillic alphabets contained only letters found in the
Russian alphabet
The Russian alphabet (russian: ру́сский алфави́т, russkiy alfavit, , label=none, or russian: ру́сская а́збука, russkaya azbuka, label=none, more traditionally) is the script used to write the Russian language. I ...
to keep them compatible with Russian
typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...
s. Sounds absent from Russian were marked with digraphs and other letter combinations. The palochka was the only exception because the numerical digit 1 was used instead of the letter. In fact, on many Russian typewriters, the character looked not like the digit 1 but like the
Roman numeral
Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, ea ...
with
serif
In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ( ...
s. That is still common because the palochka is not present in most standard keyboard layouts (and, for some of them, not even the soft-dotted ) or common fonts and so it cannot be easily entered or reliably displayed on many computer systems. For example, as of , even the official site of the
uses the digit 1 instead of the palochka.
Usage
In the alphabets of
Abaza,
Adyghe,
Avar,
Dargwa,
Ingush,
Lak,
Lezgian, and
Tabassaran, it is a modifier letter which signals the preceding consonant as an
ejective
In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some ...
or
aspirated consonant
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with t ...
;
this letter has no phonetic value on its own. An exception is the
Abkhaz language
Abkhaz ( ; ), sometimes spelled Abxaz and also known as Abkhazian, is a Northwest Caucasian language most closely related to Abaza. It is spoken mostly by the Abkhaz people. It is one of the official languages of Abkhazia, where around 100,000 ...
, which does not use the palochka for rendering aspiration, but instead uses the
schwa (ә) as a modifier letter for
labialization
Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels invol ...
.
In Adyghe, the palochka is also a
glottal stop
The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents th ...
.
*Example from
Kabardian Adyghe dialect: , "he asked her for something"
In Avar
*Example from Avar: , "to speak"
In
Chechen, the palochka makes a preceding voiceless stop or affricate ejective, but also represents the
voiced pharyngeal fricative
The voiced pharyngeal approximant or fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ?\. Epiglotta ...
when it does not follow a voiceless stop or affricate. As an exception, in the digraph ⟨х⟩, it produces the
voiceless pharyngeal fricative
The voiceless pharyngeal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is an h-bar, , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is X\. In the transc ...
.
*Examples from Chechen: , "girl" and [], "sea"
Computing codes
: The lowercase form of palochka was added to Unicode 5.0 in July 2006.
See also
* Cyrillic characters in Unicode
References
{{Reflist
Abaza language
Adyghe language
Avar language
Chechen language
Dargwa language
Ingush language
Lak language
Lezgian languages
Kabardian language