Palochka

The letter looks similar to the digit 1. Its uppercase form resembles the Latin Letter I (I i) in uppercase form, while its lowercase form resembles the Latin letter L (L l) in lowercase form.^{[citation needed ]}

The Cyrillic palochka was derived directly from the Arabic letter alif ⟨ا ⟩. The name of the letter comes from a diminutive form of the Russian word палка (translit. palka), which means "stick " (as in, a long thin piece of wood). In the early days of the Soviet Union, many of the non-Russian Cyrillic alphabets contained only letters found in the Russian alphabet to keep them compatible with Russian typewriters. Sounds absent from Russian were marked with digraphs and other letter combinations. The palochka was the only exception because the numerical digit 1 was used instead of the letter. In fact, on many Russian typewriters, the character looked not like the digit 1 but like the Roman numeral I with serifs. That is still common because the palochka is not present in most standard keyboard layouts (and, for some of them, not even the similar-looking Cyrillic-script letter dotted i ⟨І⟩) or common fonts and so it cannot be easily entered or reliably displayed on many computer systems. For example, even the official site of the People's Assembly of the Republic of Ingushetia uses the digit 1 instead of the palochka.^[1]

In the alphabets of Abaza, Avar, Chechen, Dargwa, Ingush, Lak, Lezgian, Tabassaran, and Tsakhur, it is a modifier letter which signals the preceding consonant as an ejective or pharyngeal consonant;^{[2] [bettersourceneeded ]} this letter has no phonetic value on its own.

In Adyghe, the palochka has its own phonetic value, representing a glottal stop /ʔ/ (like the tt in GA button).

• Example from Kabardian Adyghe dialect: елъэӀуащ [jaɬaˈʔwaːɕ], "he asked her for something"

In Avar, it represents an ejective consonant.

• Example from Avar: кӀалъазе [kʼaˈɬaze], "to speak"

In Chechen, the palochka makes a preceding stop or affricate ejective if voiceless, or pharyngealized if voiced, but also represents the pharyngealized glottal plosive /ʔʕ/ (like the ayn in Arabic, but more abrupt, usually transcribed /ʡ/) when it does not follow a stop or affricate. As an exception, in the digraph ⟨хӀ⟩, it produces the voiceless glottal fricative /h/. Ingush is similar.

• Examples from Chechen: йоӀ [juo̯ʔʕ], "girl" and хӀорджӀаьла [hordʒʕæla], "shark"

Exceptionally among the Caucasian languages, Abkhaz does not use the palochka, but instead uses a series of special letters to distinguish ejective and non-ejective (aspirated) consonants.

^[3]

The lowercase form of the palochka was added to Unicode 5.0 in July 2006.

• Cyrillic characters in Unicode
• 1