Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...

, iotation (, ) is a form of palatalization that occurs when a consonant comes into contact with the

palatal approximant The voiced palatal approximant is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ; the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j, and in the Americanist phonetic notation i ...

from the succeeding phoneme. The is represented by

iota Iota (; uppercase Ι, lowercase ι; ) is the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Yodh. Letters that arose from this letter include the Latin I and J, the Cyrillic І (І, і), Yi (Ї, ї), and J ...

(ι) in the

early Cyrillic alphabet The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is an alphabetic writing system that was developed in Medieval Bulgaria in the Preslav Literary School during the late 9th century. It is used to write the Chur ...

and the

Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...

on which it is based. For example, ''ni'' in English ''onion'' has the sound of iotated ''n''. Iotation is a phenomenon distinct from Slavic first palatalization in which only the front vowels are involved, but the final result is similar.

Sound change

Iotation occurs when a labial (, ), dental (, , ) or velar (, , ) consonant comes into contact with an ''iotated vowel'', i.e. one preceded by a palatal glide . As a result, the consonant becomes partially or completely palatalized. In many Slavic languages, iotated consonants are called "soft" and the process of iotation is called "softening". Iotation can result in a partial palatalization so the centre of the tongue is raised during, and sometimes after, the articulation of the consonant. There can also be a complete sound change to a palatal or

alveolo-palatal consonant In phonetics, alveolo-palatal (alveolopalatal, ''alveo-palatal'' or ''alveopalatal'') consonants, sometimes synonymous with pre-palatal consonants, are intermediate in articulation between the coronal and dorsal consonants, or which have simu ...

. This table summarizes the typical outcomes in the modern Slavic languages: According to most scholars, the period of iotation started approximately in the 5th century, in the era of

Proto-Slavic Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl., PS.; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic) is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium BC through the 6th ...

, and it lasted for several centuries, probably into the late Common Slavic dialect differentiation. Here is an example from the early stage: * Proto-Slavic *'/kьасьа > Russian, Ukrainian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Serbian ''(čaša)'', Czech ', Croatian čaša

Orthography

Iotated vowels

In Slavic languages, iotated vowels are preceded by a

before a

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

, at the beginning of a word, or between two vowels in the middle of a word, creating a diphthongoid, a partial

diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...

. In the

, the consonant is represented by

(ι). For example, the English ''apple'' is

cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical effects on both the s ...

to Russian '' ()'', both come from . As a result of the phenomenon, no native Slavic root starts with an or an but only with a and ; although other vowels are possible. An exception to this is Bulgarian, which has lost iotation for all front vowels (compared to Russian or Polish, who lost it only before ). As it was invented for the writing of Slavic languages, the original

Cyrillic alphabet The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Easte ...

has relatively complex ways for representing iotation by devoting an entire class of letters to deal with the issue. There are letters which represent iotated vowels; the same letters also palatalize preceding consonants (with or without self-iotation), which is why iotation and palatalization are often mixed up. There are also two special letters (''soft sign'' Ь and ''hard sign'' Ъ) that also induce iotation; in addition, Ь palatalizes preceding

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

, allowing combinations of both palatalized (soft) and plain (hard) consonants with . Originally, these letters produced short vowels and . The exact use depends on the language. The adjective for a phone which undergoes iotation is ''iotated''. The adjective for a letter formed as a

ligature Ligature may refer to: Language * Ligature (writing), a combination of two or more letters into a single symbol (typography and calligraphy) * Ligature (grammar), a morpheme that links two words Medicine * Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture us ...

of the Early Cyrillic I (І) and another letter, used to represent iotation, is ''iotated''.. The use of an iotated letter does not necessarily denote iotation. Even an iotated letter following a consonant letter is not iotated in most orthographies, but iotated letters imply iotated pronunciation after vowels and soft and hard signs as well as in isolation. In the Cyrillic alphabet, some letter forms are iotated, formed as a

of Early Cyrillic I (І) and a vowel. In old inscriptions, other iotated letters, even consonants, could be found, but they are not in the regular alphabet. There are more letters that serve the same function, but their

glyph A glyph ( ) is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A ...

s are not made in the same way.

Iotated consonants

Iotated consonants occur as result of iotation. They are represented in IPA with superscript ''j'' after it and in

X-SAMPA The Extended Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (X-SAMPA) is a variant of SAMPA developed in 1995 by John C. Wells, professor of phonetics at University College London. It is designed to unify the individual language SAMPA alphabets, and ...

with apostrophe after it so the pronunciation of iotated ''n'' could be represented as or []. When Vuk Karadžić reformed the Serbian language, he created new letters to represent iotated consonants. Macedonian language, Macedonian uses two of them, but has its own versions for iotated ''t'' and ''d'' (resembling the letters Г and К instead of Т and Д):

References

Bibliography