я

Forms

я (ja)^[1] The oblique cases come from another stem: меня́, мне, мной (мно́ю), обо мне.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old East Slavic ꙗзъ (jazŭ), from Proto-Slavic *azъ (“I”).^[1][4] Old Russian had both the long язъ (jazŭ) and the short я (ja), and Mstislav's charter of 1130 uses the two side by side.^[5] The long form lives on in Old Church Slavonic азъ (azŭ), Bulgarian аз (az) and Slovene jaz; Ukrainian я (ja), Czech já and Polish ja have the short one.^[5][4] The short form is only dialectal in South Slavic apart from Serbo-Croatian, but it prevailed entirely in West and East Slavic; it may be a later shortening (Kiparsky compared colloquial Swedish ja for jag) or already Proto-Slavic, and the second-person pronoun may have helped it along.^[3]

The Slavic pronoun belongs with Lithuanian aš, Latvian es, Old Prussian es, Ancient Greek ἐγώ (egṓ) and Latin ego, but its initial vowel differs from theirs.^[5] Vasmer sets an Indo-European ⟨*eǵ-⟩ (Greek, Latin, Germanic) beside a dialectal ⟨*eǵh-⟩ (Indic, Venetic); Wiktionary reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *éǵh₂.^[1] The loss of the final ⟨-z⟩ in я has no sure explanation: Vasmer thinks analogy with ты very unlikely, and finds an older account of the initial ⟨a-⟩ as a particle fused with the pronoun the best attempt, though it has been contested.^[5] Shaposhnikov stands apart: he derives я from a Proto-Slavic *ja, going back to an Indo-European demonstrative and unconnected with аз.^[6] Wiktionary calls я a doublet of эго.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Vasmer cites both forms, язъ and я, from Mstislav's charter of 1130.^[5] Sreznevsky's materials list я as the first person of the personal pronoun.^[7]

Semantic evolution

Shaposhnikov notes that the Russian of the 11th–17th centuries knew я beside the Church Slavonic азъ; a dictionary of 1731 records the phrase я таковъ, and the bare pronoun is in the dictionaries from 1771.^[6] In the TOROT corpus of Old and Middle Russian texts it is commonest in the 17th-century Life of Avvakum, and it also appears in the birchbark letters and the Laurentian Chronicle.^[8]

In bookish and technical language я has also become an indeclinable neuter noun for the self, the individual aware of itself.^[2][6] Colloquial Russian uses я тебе! as a threat, and не я буду, если… to vouch for one's resolve.^[2]

Timeline

• 1130 – язъ and я side by side in Mstislav's charter.^[5]
• 1731 – я таковъ in a dictionary.^[6]
• 1771 – the pronoun я in the dictionaries.^[6]

Meanings

Pronoun

1. I: the word by which the speaker refers to themself.^[2][6][1]

Noun

1. (bookish, technical; indeclinable, neuter) The self: a person as an individual aware of themself, as in своё «я» “one's own self”.^[2][6]

Related words

• аз
• эго
• мы
• Old East Slavic ꙗзъ (jazŭ)
• Old Church Slavonic азъ (azŭ)

Usage notes

The letter я, the last of the Russian alphabet, replaced the older letters ꙗ and ѧ; the dictionaries have it from 1771.^[6] From the end of the 14th century ѧ also served as the numeral 900.^[6][9] Я is also the name of the letter, an indeclinable neuter noun.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Ozhegov, S. I.; Shvedova, N. Yu. (1997), Tolkovyj slovar' russkogo jazyka [Толковый словарь русского языка], 4th ed., Moskva: Azbukovnik, p. s.v. я
3. ^ a b Havlová, Eva; Erhart, Adolf; Janyšková, Ilona (eds.) (1989–2022), Etymologický slovník jazyka staroslověnského, 21 fascicles, Praha: Academia / Brno: Tribun EU, p. 53
4. ^ a b Derksen, Rick (2008), Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 4, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 31
5. ^ a b c d e f Vasmer, Max (1964–1973), Ètimologičeskij slovar' russkogo jazyka, transl. and suppl. by O. N. Trubačev, 4 vols., Moskva: Progress, p. 4, 538
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Shaposhnikov, A. K. (2010), Ètimologičeskij slovar' sovremennogo russkogo jazyka [Этимологический словарь современного русского языка], 2 vols., Moskva: Flinta / Nauka, p. 2, 570
7. ^ Sreznevsky, I. I. (1893–1912), Materialy dlja slovarja drevne-russkago jazyka po pis'mennym pamjatnikam [Материалы для словаря древнерусского языка по письменным памятникам], 3 vols., Sankt-Peterburg: Imperatorskaja Akademija nauk, p. 3, s.v. я
8. ^ Eckhoff, Hanne M.; Berdicevskis, Aleksandrs et al., TOROT: The Tromsø Old Russian and OCS Treebank, release 20200116, torottreebank.github.io
9. ^ Vasmer, Max (1964–1973), Ètimologičeskij slovar' russkogo jazyka, transl. and suppl. by O. N. Trubačev, 4 vols., Moskva: Progress, p. 4, 537