Thread: Random Question

I was at a Russian art exhibit today called "Мир Искусства". I enjoyed it very much!

That's not the point though. The point I'm making is that on paintings with words on them, and basically all the russian I saw, almost every word ended with "ъ". I was just wondering why...

Any ideas?

Thanks

I think it's a pre-revolutionary language thing; adjectives (and many other words) tended to end with ъ; the Soviets introduced reforms to do away with it.

From wikipedia:

"The most recent major reform of Russian spelling was carried out shortly after the Russian Revolution. The Russian orthography was simplified by eliminating four obsolete letters and the archaic usage of the letter yer (hard sign) at the ends of words, which had originally been a vowel with a sound similar to schwa, but had become silent by the 20th century."

Interesting..thanks!

Pre 1917 ALL consonants had to be marked as hard or soft.

This meant if they were hard that hard to be followed by a hard vowel or a hard sign. Thus all words ending in a consonant, ended in a hard sign.

Also there were letters removed from the alphabet the most used was yat which looked like this



I believe it was a stressed Е. The E in Хлеб was one of those. It was a very common letter.

Also you weren't allowed to write И before another vowel, you had to have I instead. Россія.

Words and names of Greek origin started in Ф started with Theta instead:

It was called Fita.

The name Фёдр started with this.

And these reforms were proposed BEFORE the revolution

Originally Posted by Barmaley

I think it's a pre-revolutionary language thing; adjectives (and many other words) tended to end with ъ; the Soviets introduced reforms to do away with it.

Adjectives ending with 'ъ'??? Can I suppose you actually talked about nouns?

Originally Posted by Scorpio

Adjectives ending with 'ъ'??? Can I suppose you actually talked about nouns?

Duh. I have no idea why I wrote adjective; I saw a photo somewhere of a (hat?) store in Vladivostok with nouns ending, very oddly to me, with ъ. Somehow that mutated to adjectives in my text -- my apologies. By the way, if someone would like to see the ъ and ь noun endings in action you can take a look at these graphics: http://www.kubera.narod.ru/tunkel/i.htm[/quote]

Wouldn't masculine short form adjectives have ended in a hard sign?

Я согласенъ

All words ending in a consonant sound had either ъ or ь after the last vowel: "Домъ стоялъ в густомъ бору". It didn't matter what part of speech it was, if it ended in a hard consonant, it had a mute "ъ" in the end.