From: naddy@mips.inka.de   
      
   On 2024-05-18, Ross Clark  wrote:   
      
   > I'm remembering, without consulting any books, but I think there is no   
   > actual palatalization before (historic) a,o,u, as one might expect.   
   > The Russian я following palatalized consonant comes from the front nasal   
   > vowel *ę;   
      
   There are other sources of я.  Just looking at two feminines on -я:   
   неделя ‘week’ < PSl. *neděľa   
   заря ‘dawn, dusk’ < PSl. *zořa   
      
   > and unless I'm mistaken ю only represents /ju/ in native   
   > Slavic words   
      
   любить ‘to love’ < PSl. *ľubiti   
      
   Proto-Slavic already had a number of palatalized consonants, most   
   easily traceable ň, ľ, ř.  Those later merged with the newly   
   palatalized consonants before front vowels.   
      
   So there are clearly native examples of Cʲa and Cʲu.  The lack of   
   Cʲo is curious.  Leaving aside the later development of ё, Russian   
   morphology shows an alternation between Cʲe and Co.  I don't know   
   what to make of that.   
      
   Huh, it seems to have been as simple as fronting o > e after   
   palatal consonants:   
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Slavic_language#Alternations   
      
   >> This could be related to the fact that the Russian   
   >> vowels have fronted allophones after (ё) or between (ю) palatalized   
   >> consonants.   
   >   
   > Yes, this is a better reason for using ё and ю. It also accounts for the   
   > Bulgarians using ьо /jo/. (Found another example: шофьор 'driver'.)   
      
   You keep writing /jo/, but there is no /j/. Шофьор is /ʃoˈfʲɔr/.   
   When an actual /j/ is needed, Bulgarian resorts to й:   
   Jörg Haider > Йорг Хайдер   
   yo-yo > йо-йо   
      
   Russian also tends to use йо over ё in such contexts.   
      
   --   
   Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)