A
yer is one of two letters in
Cyrillic alphabets, namely
ъ (ѥръ,
jerŭ) and
ь (ѥрь,
jerĭ). The
Glagolitic alphabet used as their respective counterparts the letters and . They originally represented phonemically the "ultra-short" vowels in
Slavic languages (including
Old Church Slavonic), collectively known as the yers. In all Slavic languages they either
evolved into various "full" vowels or disappeared, in some cases leaving
palatalization of adjacent consonants. At present, the only Slavic language that uses "ъ" as a vowel sign (pronounced /ɤ/) is Bulgarian (although in many cases it corresponds to earlier "ѫ", originally pronounced /õ/). Many languages using the Cyrillic alphabet have kept one or more of the yers to serve specific orthographic functions.