(only in loanwords such as ) and can be seen as a replacement of phonetically identical , which gets rid of an "inconvenient" letter . In Ukrainian and Bulgarian, the spelling indicates palatalization, not iotation. , an "unpalatalization sign", also denotes iotation, as in the case of , , and in Russian. Similarly, the soft sign may denote iotation in Belarusian and Ukrainian, but it is not used so extensively as in Russian. Ukrainian uses a quite different repertoire of vowel letters from those of Russian and Belarusian, and iotation is usually expressed by an apostrophe in Ukrainian. Still the soft sign is used in Ukrainian if the sound preceded by an iotated vowel is palatalized. In Bulgarian Among Slavic languages using the Cyrillic script, the soft sign has the most limited use in Bulgarian: since 1945, the only possible position is one between consonants and (such as in names Жельо, Кръстьо, and Гьончо). As a vowel in Slavic studies In Slavistic transcription, Ь and Ъ are used to denote Proto-Slavic extra-short sounds and respectively (slověnьskъ adj. 'Slavonic'), like Old Slavonic orthography. Digraphs Аь The soft sign does not occur after vowels in Slavic languages, but the digraph for // or // was introduced to some non-Slavic Cyrillic-based alphabets such as Chechen, Ingush and various Dagestanian languages such as Tabasaran. Similarly, the digraph was introduced for // or //, and for //, plus iotated forms such as and as required. This use of ь is similar to a trailing e as used in, for example, German, when umlauts are unavailable (cf. Goethe). There were proposals to use the same for Turkic languages, as a replacement to Cyrillic Schwa (Ә) for or . Unlike Schwa, which is not represented in many Cyrillic character repertoires such as Windows-1251, both and are readily available as letters of the basic modern Russian alphabet. Consonants Like the hard sign and the palochka, many languages use the soft sign forms digraphs to represent sounds which are phonetically similar, yet distinct phonemes from the bare letter. For example, while г represents //, гь represents // in Crimean Tatar, // in Archi, and // in Avar and Tabasaran. Representations Under normal orthographic rules, it has no uppercase form, as no word begins with the letter. However, Cyrillic type fonts normally provide an uppercase form for setting type in all caps or for using it as an element of