Ya (letter)

Яя Яя

Ya (Я) is the 33rd and last letter of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. It is pronounced as /ja/ (SAMPA). In Russian language, "Я" is the personal pronoun "I".

Я began its life as A iotified, a ligature of І and А, similar to letters Ю or Ѥ. Over time, І and А joined for the sake of faster writing and formed modern Я, a letter that looks just like reversed Latin letter R, see: ЯR.

Though the two letters are completely different in both origin and pronunciation, in the West it is popularly thought (for example see [1]) that they have something in common, that Я is some sort of "Russian R", and for this reason Я is sometimes used instead of R in titles of books, movies and computer games that are happening in Russia, for example: TETЯIS (another letter with similar fate is Cyrillic I (И), used instead of N). Cyrillic R looks like Latin P.

Я is a modern invention; it is not part of the old Cyrillic alphabet and does not exist in the Glagolitic, Greek or Latin alphabets. It has no numerical value and no name other than "Ya".

Code positions

Character encoding	Case	Binary	Hexadecimal	Octal	Decimal
Unicode	Capital	0000010000101111	042F	2057	1071
Unicode	Small	0000010001001111	044F	2117	1103
KOI	Capital	11110001	F1	361	241
KOI	Small	11010001	D1	321	209
Windows 1251	Capital	11011111	DF	337	223
Windows 1251	Small	11111111	FF	377	255
ISO 8859-5	Capital	11001111	CF	317	207
ISO 8859-5	Small	11101111	EF	357	239

Its HTML entity is Я for capital and я for small letter.

Ya (letter)

Code positions

See also