letters (soft sign Ь and hard sign Ъ) that also induce iotation; in addition, Ь palatalizes preceding consonant, allowing combinations of both palatalized (soft) and plain (hard) consonants with . Originally, these letters produced short vowels and . The exact use depends on the language. The adjective for a phone which undergoes iotation is iotated. The adjective for a letter formed as a ligature of the Early Cyrillic I (І) and another letter, used to represent iotation, is iotified.. The use of an iotified letter does not necessarily denote iotation. Even an iotified letter following a consonant letter is not iotated in most orthographies, but iotified letters imply iotated pronunciation after vowels, soft and hard signs as well as in isolation. In the Cyrillic alphabet, some letter forms are iotified, formed as a ligature of Early Cyrillic I (І) and a vowel. In old inscriptions, other iotified letters, even consonants, could be found, but they are not in the regular alphabet. There are more letters that serve the same function, but their glyphs are not made in the same way. Iotated consonants Iotated consonants occur as result of iotation. They are represented in IPA with superscript j after it and in X-SAMPA with apostrophe after it so the pronunciation of iotated n could be represented as or []. When Vuk Karadžić reformed the Serbian language, he created new letters to represent iotated consonants. Macedonian uses two of them, but has its own versions for iotated t and d (resembling the letters Г and К instead of Т and Д): See also Cyrillic alphabet Cyrillic ligatures Iotacism Palatalization, the historical-linguistic sound change Soft sign References Bibliography Assimilation (linguistics) Cyrillic script