Yat (Ѣ)

Reading notes

• Before the Wedding §2 the letter "yat"

  Ѣ (yat), a letter of the pre-1918 Russian alphabet whose correct spelling was treated as the mark of a proper education -- the bride's one claimed intellectual accomplishment is a spelling rule, not a thought.

• To M. Ye. Chekhov, 18 January 1887. Moscow. §11 I would abolish both yat, and fita (a foolish letter!), and izhitsa, and i.

  Yat (Ѣ), fita (Ѳ), izhitsa (Ѵ), and decimal i (I) were four letters of the pre-reform Russian alphabet, each redundant with another letter already representing the same sound (yat with е, fita with ф, izhitsa mostly obsolete, decimal i with и). Their correct use was a real burden of literacy instruction and a genuine target of the orthographic-reform movement that would culminate in the Bolshevik spelling reform of 1918; Chekhov's complaint here anticipates that reform by three decades.

• To M. Ye. Chekhov, 18 January 1887. Moscow. §16 The poor fellow is thrown off only by yat, fita, and i

  A closing joke that circles back to the letter's earlier orthography riff: Dolzhenko, otherwise admirable, is undone in writing by exactly the archaic letters Chekhov has just proposed abolishing.

• The Pink Stocking §15 а ять

  Yat (ѣ, the pre-1918 Cyrillic letter ѣ) marked a vowel that had merged in pronunciation with 'e' for most speakers by the 19th century, so its correct placement had to be memorized word by word rather than sounded out -- a notorious shibboleth of literacy and schooling. Confusing it, as Lidochka does with 'zemlya' ('land'), was the textbook mark of a poor or interrupted education, which is exactly Somov's complaint.