The story of "ér": How the most popular letter became the rarest

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In January 2018, the 100th anniversary of the Russian language reform was celebrated. Exactly a century ago, the People's Commissar Lunacharsky approved a decree on the introduction of an updated spelling, and the letter "er" or "b" lost its privileged status. But before that, the letter could rightfully be called the most popular in the Russian alphabet - it was attributed in all words that ended in a consonant.

Fur coats were thrown off not only by the boyars …

The letter has long lost its meaning when writing at the end of words and only just took up space on paper. Once "b" had several functions. It was used as a word separator, similar to a space. In the distant past, in the Russian language there were no closed syllables at the end of words, and this was against the rules and "er" was written in order not to break them.

In the Church Slavonic language, voiced consonants ending in many words were not made deaf by "er". At the end of the nouns "ъ" indicated that they belonged to the masculine gender. Over time, these functions have been lost, but the spelling has survived.

In total, two reforms have been carried out in the Russian alphabet aimed at changing it. The first changed the spelling by order of Peter I. She set herself the task of simplifying the alphabet of the Russian language. It was then that the letters became uppercase and lowercase, some of them changed their style, the civil alphabet appeared.

As a result of that innovation, five letters disappeared. All this was done so that the wider masses of people could master the skills of reading and writing. Lomonosov wrote on this occasion that then not only boyars threw off their fur coats, meaning the Old Slavonic letter.

Yat, Izhitsa, Fita and EP

The next reform took place in 1918. It was thanks to her that the spelling and pronunciation of some words changed, and were also removed from everyday life: yat, izhitsa, fita and er, or, as we would now write, ep. As a result of the transformation, the alphabet was born, replacing the alphabet. The first Constitution of the USSR in 1924 came out not with solid signs in the text, but with apostrophes. Until the early thirties, books were also published without "b".

Inexpensive typewriters were then produced without this sign, and therefore typewritten texts were replete with apostrophes for a long time. Abolished "ъ" when writing not only at the end, but also in the middle of some words, such as "dvuharshinny", that is, before it was placed not only in front of the iotated vowel, as now: adjutant, courier, announcement, leaving behind the dividing function of a solid sign.

Interesting fact: "Russian emigrants used the old spelling until 1950."

The fact that this letter is used too often when writing was noticed long before the innovations. It took eight percent of the time to print it on paper; in monetary terms, it cost the Russian treasury four hundred thousand rubles a year, that is, it was the most expensive and was not readable at the same time.

To better understand the scale, an example can be given: in the old edition of War and Peace, which had 2,080 pages, 115,000 of these unpronounceable characters were printed. If you put them together, you get a 70-page brochure! Now multiply that by the entire circulation, which was 10,000 copies. It turns out that the employees of the printing house spent three and a half days in vain out of the hundred days spent on the publication of this book. And this is about one book. And if you imagine how much paper was wasted.

Spender letter

Because of this, it was not used on the telegraph in Tsarist Russia, and even some books were printed without the "er". The idea of the modification did not belong to the Soviet government. In 1904, leading linguists were brought together by the Imperial Academy to revise the spelling rules. The Spelling Commission proposed to remove the ep, i, yat, fit and ichitsa. Something prevented the implementation of this project, submitted for approval in 1912.

In May 1917, Kerensky ordered the introduction of these changes, but the Provisional Government did not find the opportunity to implement them. The Bolshevik government in 1918, by decree, brought progressive transformations into effect and removed unnecessary letters from typographic sets. The White Guard did not recognize this reform and wrote with the Izhitsy and EP.

Interesting fact: Now "b" is used extremely rarely, about 0.02% (rare letters "e", "c", "u" are 0.2% each, "f" - 0.1%).

After the letters "ъ" were withdrawn from the printing houses, there was nothing to print the dividing solid sign with. Then they began to replace it with an apostrophe: "unification - unification". This spelling was regarded by many as a component of innovation, but this was not the case. The new spelling has made it possible to fight illiteracy in the country more effectively, it has become simpler and clearer.

The apostrophe was used much earlier. In Church Slavonic writing it was called "yerok". It was placed instead of "b" after multi-letter prepositions or prefixes. After the one-letter letters, full-fledged "eer" were written. In the dashing 90s, newly-minted businessmen began to open firms and companies, in the names of which they “inscribed” ér to add weight and solidity. Even some literary and Internet publications could not resist the temptation to return to the origins of Russian grammar and ascribe to themselves an extra solid sign, as an example of which is Kommersant.

Especially for contemporaries who want to be literate, we have collected 10 "playful" words, in which too often mistakes are made.