LingoflyЬ ь — soft sign
«soft sign» is a sign of the Ukrainian script. No sound of its own. It softens the consonant before it: the middle of the tongue rises toward the roof of the mouth, as if about to say y. The Ukrainian alphabet has 33 letters in total. In sil (salt) it softens the final l, and in den (day) the final n. It appears, for example, in the word “добрий день” (dobryi den) — good day.
In short
| Character | Ь ь |
| Name | soft sign |
| Sound | no sound, softens |
| What it is | a sign |
In our course the character comes 31st of 33, its neighbours in the course are щ and ю, appears in 425 words of this site.
How to type Ь ь
- On a phone: add the Ukrainian keyboard in the keyboard settings (Gboard on Android; Keyboards in the iPhone settings).
- In Word on Windows: type U+044C and press Alt+X right after it — the code turns into the character.
- On a Mac: switch to the Unicode Hex Input source, hold Option and type 044C.
- Unicode code points: ь — U+044C, Ь — U+042C. With them, the characters can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
No sound of its own. It softens the consonant before it: the middle of the tongue rises toward the roof of the mouth, as if about to say y
The character in the “other twenty-six” group
Six read the way they look: а (a), е, к, м, о (o), т. Six only look Latin: в (v) is v, н is n, р is r, с is s, у (U) is oo, and х is the ch of Scottish "loch". The other fourteen are new shapes. Thirteen of them stand for sounds you already know, and ь has no sound: it softens the letter before it.
Words with this character
How to remember this character
A single letter is the hardest thing to remember: memory has nothing to hold on to — a character has no meaning. A three-step loop works: see the character, try to recall the sound, see the right answer.
And come back to it the next day, not in an hour: a check a day or two later beats a check the same day. Nobody holds the whole alphabet — 33 letters — at once.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
Frequently asked
How does the Ukrainian character ь read?
No sound, softens. It is a sign of the Ukrainian script. No sound of its own. It softens the consonant before it: the middle of the tongue rises toward the roof of the mouth, as if about to say y.
What is the letter ь called?
Soft sign is what this character is called when the alphabet is recited aloud.