ь

Usage notes
Where Ь ь were used in Latin script, small-capital ʙ was often used as the lower-case form of B.

In most languages, it was pronounced or, corresponding to Anatolian Turkish $⟨ı⟩$. The exception was Kalmuk, where it had its Cyrillic sound value of palatalization.

Letter

 * 1) . Palatalizes a preceding consonant letter.

Pronunciation

 * In the digraph ьо:

Usage notes

 * This letter is only ever used following a consonant as the digraph ьо (e.g. in ) to denote palatalization.

Usage notes
Only used in Russian borrowings.

Usage notes

 * The soft sign has no sound of its own, but modifies that of the preceding consonant by causing it to be pronounced palatalized (i.e. soft).
 * Less commonly, it just has a traditional orthographic usage with no phonetic meaning. For example, nouns ending in, , and  are pronounced identically to their counterparts ending in , ,  and , but they have different grammatical genders and declensions.
 * It also has the function of a separation sign: vowels after the soft sign are pronounced separately from the previous consonant and are iotated. Compare  and.