The b sign always softens a consonant. Rules for writing a soft sign

The letter “ь” (soft sign) is used as a dividing sign and as a sign to indicate the softness of the preceding consonant.

Dividing b is written:

1) inside a word (but not after a prefix) before the letters e, e, yu, i, and: curtain, curious, blizzard, interview, weeds, foxes;

2) in some borrowed words before o: battalion, broth, guillotine, carmagnola, companion, cotillion, pavilion, papillotka, postman, signor, champignon, chignon; in proper names: Cola Brugnon.

As a means of indicating the softness of the preceding consonant, the letter ь is written:

1) at the end of words: shipyard, eight, swell, ripen, blood; the letter ь can be used at the end of the first part of complex and complexly abbreviated words: copper-containing, flour mill, salt-losing.

2) after a soft l [l "], regardless of whether a hard or soft consonant is followed by: alto, balm, casually, lioness, linen, flatterer, favor, herring, scalpel. ь is never written between two soft l: alley, gait, appeal, porthole, illustration, rally;

3) in the middle of a word between two consonants, if the first is soft and the second is hard: request, carving, very, molting, before;

4) in the middle of a word between two soft consonants if, when a word is changed or in related words, the second consonant becomes hard, and the first retains its softness: take (cf.: take), eight (cf.: eighth), about a request (cf.: request); but: bow (cf.: bow), massacre (cf.: cut, cutting), crowd (cf.: close).

Note 1. It is not written ь in combinations nn, nch, rch, rshch, chk, chn, schn: monkey, beg, nurse (although nanny), writhe, typesetter, pitching, strong, powerful.

Note 2. ь is not written between two soft consonants at the absolute end of a word (except for writing ь after l): nail, bone, separately, death, tornado, mouth. Here the softness of the consonant preceding the final consonant is not primordial, but positional, acquired from a nearby soft consonant (assimilative softness).

Lecture, abstract. Spelling of the soft sign b - concept and types. Classification, essence and features. 2018-2019.

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There are two amazing letters in the Russian alphabet - b and b - they do not represent sounds! Why are they needed then? Today we are talking about the importance of the soft sign in the Russian language, about its function in speech.

Three roles of one letter

The soft sign is one of the letters whose function has changed during the development of language. Once upon a time this letter was called “er” and denoted a very short vowel sound (reduced) - something between E and I.

As a result of the development of language, the sound denoted by the letter er disappeared. If this letter was stressed, it became E; if there is no stress in the middle of the word, it simply disappears (this is what explains the alternation with zero sound: stump - stump, for example); at the end of a word it began to denote the softness of a consonant.

So, a soft sign can be an indicator of the softness of a consonant (day). May indicate a grammatical feature (for example, the 3rd declension of a noun: help, but cloak).

Or it can be divisive.

What separates the soft sign?

The soft dividing sign is so called because it seems to divide the word into parts: the part after the sign is pronounced as if a new word begins from this place. If, for example, the letter I appears after the soft separating sign, it is read in the same way as at the beginning of the word: [ya]. This topic is studied in 2nd grade and usually does not cause difficulties in terms of spelling, but errors in phonetic analysis are not uncommon. Let's look at examples:

Article – [stat’y’a´]

Drinks – [p’yo´t]

Blizzard [vyu´ga]

The vowels E, Yo, Yu, Ya after the soft separating sign each denote two sounds: e - [y'e], yo - ]y'o], yu - [y'u], I - [y'a].

In what cases is a soft separator used? After any consonant except Y, before E, Yo, Yu, Ya, I. In this case, the consonant sound will not necessarily sound soft, since in this case the soft sign performs a different task. However, it is important to remember that this rule does not apply after prefixes. After consonant prefixes, before E, Yo, Yu, Ya, a hard separator is placed, not a soft one!

So, in accordance with the rule, the separating soft sign is written after the consonant before E, Yo, Yu, Ya, I anywhere in the sentence, except for the position after the prefix.

Peculiarities of using a soft sign in words of foreign language origin

Let's look at the words used in the sentence: “The postman ate broth with champignons.”

The words “postman”, “broth”, “champignon” are borrowed from the French language. Russian orthography tried to follow the pronunciation of these and other similar words, which explains the atypical for our language spelling of the soft sign before O.

Here are examples of such words:

• Bouillon.
• Medallion.
• Champignon.
• Postman.
• Canyon.
• Cotillion.
• Battalion.
• Pavilion.

How not to make a mistake in a word with a separator?

If a consonant is followed by a vowel E, Yo, Yu, Ya, I, then it is necessary to determine whether this letter is located at the junction between the prefix and the root. If we have a prefix ending in a consonant and follow it with E, Yo, Yu, or Ya, then in this place we should write not a soft, but a hard sign. And after the prefix on a consonant it goes into Y (with the exception of “collect”, words with foreign language and some other prefixes). If this is not the boundary between the prefix and the root, then you need to write a soft sign. Here are some examples: blizzard, sews, whose, birds, nightingales, necklace.

It is better to check words of foreign origin using a dictionary.

What have we learned?

A soft separating sign is written after a consonant (but not after a prefix to a consonant) before E, Yo, Yu, Ya, I; the letters E, E, Yu, I in this case represent two sounds. The soft sign is also written in some borrowed words before O (medallion, postman, etc.)

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A soft sign is one of the letters of the Russian alphabet that does not have its own sound. It cannot be pronounced phonetically, but despite this, it is significant and serves a very important role.

History of the soft sign

At the stage of the birth of the great and mighty Russian language, our familiar soft sign was used as a very short version of the letter And. Over time, the soft sign lost this purpose, but, like the letter And, continued to soften the leading consonant.

In the Cernovo Slavic dialect, the concept of using the letter b almost the same as in traditional Russian, with the exception of some details. Firstly, in Church Slavonic the soft sign, contrary to the rules and canons of the Russian language, is written after the hissing letters at the end of the nouns m.r. (bucket, guard). Secondly, the soft sign in Church Slavonic was written at the end of any short passive participles (see, hear).

In some cases, it was acceptable not to put a soft sign between consonants where it should be. For example, instead of the word darkness could write tma, and so on.

Soft sign functions

We all know that consonant sounds are soft and hard. Some consonants are always soft, and some are softened by other letters. For example, iotated vowels soften the hard consonant that precedes them. The soft sign performs exactly the same function as these vowels - it softens the consonants that precede it:

• softens the preceding consonant;
• performs the function of separation in words before iotated vowels and a vowel O in borrowed words;
• does not carry a special phonetic load, but retains the grammatical form in some words (mouse, dry land, wilderness).

Let's look at a few special cases in which a soft sign may appear in the middle of a word.

Soft sign between two consonants

Example: skates, bathhouse, golf, polka, hospital, coal.

In this case, the soft sign simply softens the preceding consonant. Rule: a soft sign in the middle of a word is not written between combinations of consonants schn, schk, chn, chk.

Soft sign between a consonant and an iotated vowel (dividing)

Example: trees, logs, pickles, learning, monkey, bindweed, necklace.

In this case, the soft sign softens the preceding consonant. The iotated vowel is decomposed into two sounds .

The soft sign can appear not only before iotated vowels.

Example: broth, champignon, canyon, medallion.

Most often this happens in foreign borrowed words.

How not to make a mistake when writing a soft sign in the middle and end of a word?

A soft sign at the end of a word is needed to soften the consonant in front.

Examples: coal, salt, moth, tulle, pain, daring, calm, scrap, teacher, password.

Sounds h, f, w According to the canons of the Russian language, they cannot be soft a priori, but in some cases a soft sign can be placed after them. It does not soften the preceding consonant, but is needed to preserve the grammatical form. Let's see in what cases this can happen:

• Feminine nouns (rye, quiet, mouse).
• Verbs in all forms (drain, protect, build, wash).
• For adverbs ending in h And w(upside down, completely) and one adverb has and(wide open).

When you don’t need to put a soft sign after hissing ones:

• Masculine nouns (reed, garage, guard).
• (good, nice, fresh).
• Adverbs on and except wide open(unbearable, married, already).
• Feminine nouns in the plural of the genitive case (pears, clouds, heaps).

A little about the transfer

How to hyphenate words with a soft sign in the middle of a word? This is worth considering separately. Words with a soft sign in the middle of a word often cause difficulties when you need to move the word to another line. And there are many mistakes of this kind made in the texts.

Words with a soft sign in the middle are hyphenated as follows: first, you need to divide the word you want to hyphenate into syllables. We remember that, as many vowels in a word, there are as many syllables.

Step 1. Example: monkey.

It is important to remember that when transferring a word with a separating soft sign to another line, you cannot separate the soft sign from the consonant in front - the transfer must be carried out only with it.

Step 2. Example: monkey(example of correct transfer).

An important detail: if a soft sign is located at the end of a word, it cannot be moved to another line.

Incorrect example: mother-in-law, love, bear.

Correct example: mother-in-law, love, honey.

When hyphenating, you cannot leave one letter on a line. This rule applies not only to words with a soft sign in the middle of the word, but also to any others.

Exercises

Soft sign in the middle of a word. 1st grade.

1. Underline those words in which a soft sign softens the preceding consonant:

Weeds, elk, fire, trees, salt, monkey, stakes, flat, letter, sable, deer, strong, trill, medallion, spruce forest, crane, horse, family, days, coat, caramel, judges, blood, love, nightingales, troublemaker, gimp, cortel, imposing.

2. Enter a soft sign where it is needed:

Hush_, reed_, hear_, garage_, sleep_, rosy_, courage_, mirage_, bake_, cut_, married_, good_, beach_, watchman_, guard_, already_, wide open_, unbearable_, beach_, backhand_, care_, carried away_, rook_, completely.

3. Perform a phonetic analysis of these words (words can be given to children by variant or each child can be given an individual word):

Curtain, backstage, expanse, sommelier, barrier.

TSYA and TSYA - which is correct?

Unfortunately, many people make a mistake in this seemingly elementary spelling. How do you know what to write at the end of a verb?

You just need to ask a question about the verb. If the verb answers the question “what to do”, a soft sign is placed. If the question is "what does it do?" - no soft sign needed.

Example: clean up (what to do?), agree (what to do?); show off (what to do?).

He cleans (what does he do?), negotiates (what does he do?), shows off (what does he do?).

No matter how they try to convince students that the knowledge they acquired during their school years will be needed in the future, unfortunately, this is not the case. However, some things taught in school will actually be useful in adulthood. For example, the ability to write correctly. To master it, you need to know the basic grammatical laws of the Russian language. Among them are the rules governing the use of separating signs ъ and ь.

Hard sign: history and its role in the word

The twenty-eighth letter of the Russian alphabet, despite the fact that it does not represent sounds, performs an important function in words. Therefore, before consideringrules governing the use of ъ and ь signs are worthlearn a little about its history and role in the word.

The hard sign existed in Slavic languages ​​almost from the very moment of their formation. It started out as a short vowel sound until it evolved into an unpronounceable letter used to divide words into syllables and also replace spaces.

At the end of the 19th century. it was noted that the frequent use of ъ in texts (4% of the total volume) is inappropriate, especially in telegraphy, cursive writing and typography. In this regard, attempts have been made more than once to limit the use of a hard sign.

After the revolution of 1917, this letter was completely abolished for almost ten years. In those years, an apostrophe was used as a separator in words.However, in 1928 it was excluded from the Russian language (but remained in Ukrainian and Belarusian), and its dividing function was taken over by a solid sign, which it performs to this day.

In what cases is ъ put in words?

As for the use of a solid sign, there are several rules for placing it before e, yu, ё, i:

• After prefixes that end with a consonant: connector, pre-anniversary.
• In terms that came from other languages, with the prefixes ab-, ad-, dis-, in-, inter-, con-, ob- and sub-: adjuvant, disjunction.
• After counter-, pan-, super, trans- and field-: pan-Europeanism, superyacht.
• In compound words starting with two-, three-, four-: two-core, three-tier, quadrilingual.

There are several exceptions, when ъ does not stand at the junction of a prefix and a root, but inside the word itself. These nouns include: courier and flaw.

When they don't put it

In addition to the rules governing the use of ъ and ь signs, it is worth remembering cases when they do not need to be used:

• A hard sign is not used in words with a prefix ending in a consonant when it is followed by the vowels a, o, i, u, e, s: cloudless, curbed.
• This sign is not used in complex abbreviated terms: inyaz, glavyuvelirtorg.
• It is also not used in lexemes written with a hyphen: half a diocese, half an apple.

When considering the rules governing the use of ъ and ь signs that perform a separating function in a word, it is worth remembering that the lexemes “interior” and “clerk” are written using a soft sign. This spelling is no exception, since in the word “interior” inter is not a prefix, but part of the root. And in “deacon” the prefix is ​​not sub-, but po-, but -deacon is the root.

What functions does a soft sign perform?

As for ь, in ancient times it meant a short vowel [and], but gradually, like ъ, it lost its sound.

At the same time, he retained the ability [and] to impart softness to the preceding consonant sound.

Unlike the hard word, it can perform 3 functions.

• Dividing.
• Informs about the softness of the preceding sound.
• Used to indicate certain grammatical forms.

Rules for using a soft sign

Studying the laws of the Russian languageregulating the use of ъ and ь signs, it is worth learning a few rules:

• A soft sign that performs a dividing function is never placed after a prefix (this is the destiny of a hard sign). Parts of words in which the dividing ь is written are the root, suffix and ending to e, ё, yu, i: monkey, interior. This rule applies to both Russian vocabulary and borrowed terms from other languages.
• The separator ь is placed in some words before the letter combination it: champignon, medallion, broth and million.

In the case when ь informs about the softness of the preceding sound, and does not perform a dividing function, its production is determined by the following rules:

• In the middle of a word ь indicates the softness of the letter l if it precedes another consonant other than l: finger, prayer. Also, the soft sign does not “wedge” into letter combinations: nch, nsch, nn, rshch, chk, chn, rch, schn ( drummer, candle).
• In the middle of a word, this sign is placed between the soft and hard consonants: please, very much.
• In the middle of a word, ь can stand between two soft consonants. Provided that when the form of the word changes, the first remains soft, and the second becomes hard: request - in a request, letter - in a letter.
• In some cases, this symbol is located at the end of a word after consonants. At the same time, it helps to establish the meaning of the token: flax(plant) - laziness(character quality) con(place for bets in the game) - horse(animal).

As a marker for individual grammatical forms, this sign is used in the following cases:

• In adjectives arising from the names of months (except January): February, September.
• At the end of numerals from 5 to 30, as well as in their middle, if they denote tens from 50 to 80 and hundreds from 500 to 900: six, seventy, eight hundred.
• In the imperative mood of verbs (except lie down - lie down): take it out, take it out, throw it in, throw it in.
• In the infinitive (initial form of the verb): maintain, raise.
• In all cases of the word “eight” and in the instrumental case it is plural. numbers of individual numerals and nouns: six, lashes.

The use of ь and ъ signs after hissing w, h, shch, sh

Following these soft sign letters is possible under the following conditions:

• At the end of most adverbs and particles, except: I can't bear to get married and in pretext between.
• In the infinitive: preserve, bake.
• In the imperative mood of verbs: anoint, comfort.
• In the second person endings of singular verbs of the future and present tenses: sell it, destroy it.
• At the end of the nominative case of nouns. gender, in III declension: daughter, power. For comparison in m. gender - cry, broadsword.

In some cases, ь is not used after these letters:

• In nouns of the 2nd declension: executioner, dummy.
• In short forms of adjectives: fresh, burning.
• In the genitive case of plural nouns: puddles, clouds

A hard sign after zh, sh, ch, sch at the end of a word or root is not placed, since its “place” is always after the prefix before e, e, yu, i.

Using ь and ъ signs: exercises

Having familiarized yourself with all the cases of setting soft and hard signs, you should move on to the exercises. To avoid confusion, we have collected together most of the above rules governing the use of ь and ъ signs. The table below will serve as a hint for completing the tasks.

In this exercise you need to choose which letter should be placed in the words.

This task concerns the use of a soft sign following sibilant letters. You should open the brackets in it and put a soft sign where necessary.

In the last exercise you need to write down the proposed words in 2 columns. In the first - those that are used with ь, in the second - those that are without it.

Since both hard and soft signs are “silent” letters, they play an important role in the Russian language. You can make many mistakes in your writing if you do not know the laws of grammar governing the use of ъ and ь signs. You will have to learn more than one rule so as not to confuse which sign should be used in a particular situation. However, it is worth it, especially in the case of a soft sign, since often only its presence helps determine the lexical meaning of a word.

Very often we simply ignore learning the functions of the soft sign, and the student simply does not know that the soft sign can mean anything other than softness. In this case, sometimes errors in pronunciation occur, for example in words such as wilderness, godly, suffocation.

Have you also once tried to pronounce the always hard consonants Zh and Sh as soft ones? Remember, they are always only hard and in Russian they do not have soft pairs.

So, if we see a soft sign after consonants, which can only be hard or only soft, we must understand that in these cases the soft sign performs other functions.

The soft sign (“b”) in Russian can perform several functions:

1. it can denote the softness of the consonant before it (day, dictionary);
2. it can denote the grammatical form of a word (speak, night);
3. and can also perform a separating function (leaves, family).

Let's talk more about each function and understand what these functions mean.

The first and most famous function of the soft sign is softness designation. A soft sign tells us that we should pronounce the consonant that comes before it softly. This is true for all consonants that have a soft pair. But we must remember that a soft sign cannot affect unpaired consonants: always hard (Zh, Sh, Ts) and always soft (Ch, Shch).

But what if we still see a soft sign after Sh or H?

Related to this grammatical function soft sign.

Always when we write a soft sign at the end of a word after hissing consonant (Zh, Sh, Ch, Shch), it does not mean softness at all, but shows us that this is a feminine word (3rd type of declension). You can remember this trick to better determine the gender of nouns ending in –b.

So, daughter, night, oven, mouse, quiet, lie, rye, help, thing– all these words are feminine.

Remember, in masculine words with a hissing consonant (Zh, Sh, Ch, Shch) at the end of the word we do not write –b: ball, rook, doctor, hut, ruff, hedgehog, borscht.

In addition, the soft sign also indicates the infinitive - the initial form of the verb: bake- to bake, help– to help. In verbs starting with - TH the soft sign denotes not only the infinitive, but also the softness of the T sound.

Now let's figure out what it is separation function soft sign. We can talk about this function when we see a soft sign after a consonant and before letters E, E, Yu, I, I(soft vowels). The separating function of the soft sign means that the soft sign “separates” the consonant before it and the subsequent soft vowel, and in this case we pronounce the vowel as a diphthong, with the initial sound /th/.

Let's look at examples of words with transcription:

Family [s`em`ya], leaves [l`is`t`ya], [friends`ya], [p`yot], pours [l`yot],
blizzard [v'yuga], nightingales [salav'yi], ants [ant'yi].

As we can see, the soft sign not only denotes the softness of consonants, but also determines the pronunciation of subsequent soft vowels and is able to indicate the grammatical features of the word, such as the feminine gender of nouns and the infinitive form of verbs.

It is very useful to know the functions of the soft sign if you want to have good pronunciation and understand how the Russian language works.

Good luck in learning Russian!
Your Julia.