I don't speak Bulgarian, but in all the languages in the Cyrillic alphabet that I do speak, the symbol ъ (Russian: твёрдый знак) is not a vowel, but instead denotes that the preceeding letter should be hard (as opposed to soft).
In Russian, there is no word like със or във, but if there was, they would be pronounced *exactly* like the shorter counterparts с and в, because the letters are already hard. In fact, before the revolution, those same words in Russian were spelled like съ and въ, until there was a spelling reform where all consonants are assumed to be hard unless otherwise noted, so the ъ symbol is only needed in cases where the consonant would normally be pronounced soft.
Probably, that is way more info than you wanted... To summerise, there are no vowels in those words. In normal speach, they attach themselves to the beginning of the following word, unless the resulting cluster is unpronouncable, in which case a vowel is inserted (Russian: во and со).
In Old Church Slavonic, the yer (ъ) used to be a vowel unto itself. It was a short /u/ sound that was part of the last visible sign of a masculine singular ending in the nominative case, since it corresponds to the Latin -us, Greek -os, and (I think the Sanskrit ending is) -ah.
In modern Bulgarian, the letter ъ is pronounced as if it were a schwa [ə], though I've read materials that classify it as an unrounded near-open back vowel [ɤ], though from what the bulk of resources will tell you, it's a schwa.
And before I get jumped on for this, I'd like to correct myself in saying that [ɤ] is not an unrounded near-open back vowel, but an unrounded close-mid back vowel. Slip of the tongue/finger.
Thats very interesting. I know very little about Old Church Slavonic (being from a quasi-Catholic family) and almost nothing about Bulgarian, but the evolution is very interesting ...
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I don't speak Bulgarian, but in all the languages in the Cyrillic alphabet that I do speak, the symbol ъ (Russian: твёрдый знак) is not a vowel, but instead denotes that the preceeding letter should be hard (as opposed to soft).
In Russian, there is no word like със or във, but if there was, they would be pronounced *exactly* like the shorter counterparts с and в, because the letters are already hard. In fact, before the revolution, those same words in Russian were spelled like съ and въ, until there was a spelling reform where all consonants are assumed to be hard unless otherwise noted, so the ъ symbol is only needed in cases where the consonant would normally be pronounced soft.
Probably, that is way more info than you wanted... To summerise, there are no vowels in those words. In normal speach, they attach themselves to the beginning of the following word, unless the resulting cluster is unpronouncable, in which case a vowel is inserted (Russian: во and со).
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In modern Bulgarian, the letter ъ is pronounced as if it were a schwa [ə], though I've read materials that classify it as an unrounded near-open back vowel [ɤ], though from what the bulk of resources will tell you, it's a schwa.
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Thats very interesting. I know very little about Old Church Slavonic (being from a quasi-Catholic family) and almost nothing about Bulgarian, but the evolution is very interesting ...
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