Talk:Soft sign

Scientific transliteration in linguistics articles
Regarding the anonymous edit: we've mostly been using scientific transliteration for Slavic languages in linguistics articles (is that correct for Russian, or do we stick to "Transliteration of Russian into English"?). The Ukrainian transliteration miakyy znak appears to be BGN/PCGN, which we don't use on Wikipedia at all; lsee Romanization of Ukrainian. It is a bit of a mixed bag for Ukrainian, though. Any thoughts? —Michael Z. 2005-07-18 03:08 Z 

See also Naming conventions, which is more documentation of usage than a recommendation (I wrote it). —Michael Z. 2005-07-18 03:10 Z 

Cedilla?
Is cedilla a type of soft sign? -Hello World! 08:47, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * No. — Monedula 11:28, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Soft for palatalized?
"Hard" and "soft" don't really seem to me to fit the definition of the two sides of the palatalization spectrum. I'm slightly synaesthetic, and whenever I hear the sound, it puts an image of flowing water in my head. So I think that non-palatalized and palatalized vowels should really be called "dry" and "wet" instead of "hard" and "soft". --  Denelson83  00:18, 23 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Soft and hard are translations of the Slavic words, for the sound of the preceding consonant. For example, in the combination нь, the /n/ sound gets softened to /nʲ/, similar to the n in Spanish señor. —Michael Z. 2008-10-23 01:04 z 

Ь in Bulgarian
Its meaning appears to be confusing. According to bg:Ь, in such examples as listed in Soft sign there is no iotation. But according to bg:Йотация in some foreign words ‹ьо› is used namely as a mean to represent /j/. So, it is confusing, where it denotes palatalization, iotation, both, or probably none. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:12, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Audio suggestion
I attempted to self-learn Russian a few years back and the soft sign was one of the things that made me give it up because I just couldn't visualize (audio-wise) how it effected words. I'd like to suggest that a sound file be created in which words with and without the modifier are spoken, so to better illustrate the difference in sound. 70.72.211.35 (talk) 04:32, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I see it's been a couple years since this request was made. I second it. It would be helpful to have sound files related to this sound. 68.146.233.86 (talk) 01:03, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Try to compare these two words (listen to computer voice, it pronounces them correctly): кон and конь. As you probably read many times there is no specific sound related to soft sign. It is not same consonant plus some sound. It changes the pronunciation of the preceding consonant. But I understand what you mean. You wish to get something common for all cases of consonant modifications when they should be palatalized to "feel" the soft sign. It is possible. Try to feel the difference between "L" in "call" and "literature". Pronounce only "L" in both these words. The soft sign is like that very short beginning of "i" phoneme in the latter word. Of course it doesn't make any sense by itself, without that "L", but your toungue will move similarily for "нь", "ть", "ль", "пь" so you even can try to pronounce "ь" separately (something like groaning). I am native Russian, sorry for my English. Dron007 (talk) 05:20, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Glyph Origin?
Neither this article, nor the articles for hard sign or yer mention where the yers (hard sign and soft sign) come from. They just say it was used in old slavic languages, not a mention of where the letter actually came from. Did it come from Greek, Glagolitic, or is the origin completely unknown? I can't find anything online on it's origin. Oikoopa (talk) 02:20, 2 March 2024 (UTC)