Often the inventor of the letters “E” is called Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova, a associate of Catherine II, who headed the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. We decided to check if this is so.

On November 29, some consider the “birthday” of the letter Yo. It is alleged that it was on this day in 1783 that Princess Dashkova invented a new letter. About this They wrote In the book “Two centuries of Russian letters ё” historian Evgeny Bee and publicist Viktor Chumakov, who called himself the “main fiber of Russia”. This version regularly appears in Media, With the wording like “Dashkova, she proposed replacing the combination of“ Io ”with a new letter“ Yo ”.” Other called Similar statements by the myth and expose the ethops.

The first time about the need to convey the sound [JO] on a letter and actually spoke Yekaterina Romanovna Dashkova, who at that time occupied the place of not only the director of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, but also the chairman of the Imperial Russian Academy (chief department for literature). On November 18 (29), at the fourth meeting of the Academy, Princess Dashkov She indicated to the audiencethat "it is certainly necessary to introduce a new letter Iô or Iôt to express words and reprimands for this consent of the beginning." And she gave a few examples: Matiorny, IOLOK, IOZH. Then the proposal was supposed to approve the Metropolitan of Novgorod and St. Petersburg Gabriel. A week later, at the next meeting, Ekaterina Dashkova announced that "the Academy considered the need to take a new letter in the alphabet, which would express it."

The role of Princess Dashkova is limited to this, at other meetings the issue of a new letter was no longer discussed. In any case, any mention of the supporters of any of the versions of the origin of the letter “Yo” among the supporters. In the dictionary of the academy, the main brainchild of Dashkova, we We meet The spelling of “Hed” and “Iozh” (in the second case, we are talking about sea hedgehog). In a few pages - “Fir, Christmas tree”, without any additional diacritic symbols.

There are two common legends about the appearance of the letter EO. First saysthat Dashkova liked the drawing of the letter on the bottle of champagne "Mote et Chandon". By the way, there is no such separate letter in the French alphabet, in the case of “Moe” we are talking about Deresis (he is also a three), a diacritic sign that signals a separate reading of neighboring letters. The second version, somewhat more believable - about the borrowing of two points from the German language, the so -called Umlaut. True, in German there is only ö, ü, ä. But there is no documentary confirmation of this version either, only guesses.

In the press, a special letter for the sound [JO] did not appear even more than ten years. Traditionally countsthat the first was printed by the letter Yo Nikolay Karamzin. According to another version, this was done by the poet Ivan Dmitriev in 1795. However, Dmitriev has in the book “And my trinkets” released by the printing house of Ridiger and Claudia, the corresponding sound Transferred combination "ïo":

It is curious that in the same book Found And the spelling of "Vasilechik".

The very first documented appearance of “e”, that is, the letters “e” with two points, dates back to 1797. In the second volume of the book “Aonids, or a collection of different, new poems” Karamzin uses The word "tears", rhyming him from the "rose". Moreover, he considers it necessary to explain that the letter “e” with two points at the top is replaced by “ï board”.

From the publication of 1797, the Russian State Library.

Thus, we know that the idea to create a new letter really belongs to Princess Dashkova. At the same time, it is not known who exactly came up with transmitting the sound of [JO] symbol “Yo”: perhaps it was Dashkova, but this was not discovered for this. Therefore, the primacy, not yet proven the opposite, remains behind Karamzin, who used to use the letter “Yo” in his book before others.

The image on the cover: Wikipedia.