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2 unusual facts about Reforms of Russian orthography


Reforms of Russian orthography

The Russian orthography was made simpler by unifying several adjectival and pronominal inflections, replacing the letters ѣ (Yat) with е, і (depending on the context of Moscovian pronunciation) and ѵ with и, ѳ with ф, and dropping the archaic mute yer, including the ъ (the "hard sign") in final position following consonants (thus eliminating practically the last graphical remnant of the Old Slavonic open-syllable system).

Russian Navy Ensign

” (Russian Pre-reform: «Cъ нами Богъ и Андреевскій флагъ!»), because the motto of the Russian Empire is ‟God is with us!


Kommersant

To make the point that the publication had outlasted the Soviet regime, "Kommersant" is spelled in Russian with a terminal hard sign (ъ) – a letter that is silent at the end of a word in modern Russian, and was thus abolished by the post-revolution Russian spelling reform.


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