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Palochka

Palochka or Páločka (majuscule: Ӏ, minuscule: ӏ, Russian: па́лочка, a stick) is a letter added to the Cyrillic alphabet when used in writing several Caucasian languages, such as Abaza, Adyghe, Avar, Chechen, Dargwa, Ingush, Kabardian, Lak, Lezgian and Tabassaran.

Palochka usually has no independent phonetic value, but is used to modify the reading of a preceding letter. It signals that a preceding consonant is an ejective. Example from the Avar language: кӀалъазе (pronounced [k’aˈɬaze]) to speak. In some of the languages that use the palochka (Adyghe, Kabardian, Chechen, Ingush), it also functions as the glottal stop. Example from the Kabardian language: елъэӀуащ ([jaɬaˈʔʷaːɕ]), he asked her for something. In the Chechen language, it represents the voiced pharyngeal fricative (ʕ).

It looks exactly like uppercase Latin letter I and uppercase Ukrainian I. The minuscule form of palochka was not encoded until Unicode 5.0. As of 2004, palochka is still not present in standard keyboard layouts or common fonts, and so cannot be easily entered or reliably displayed on many computer systems. It is usually replaced with Latin letters I or l, or sometimes (in chats or fora, for example) even with the digit 1, although technically this is incorrect.

In the days of the mechanical typewriter, this letter was the Roman numeral I, which was included on most Cyrillic typewriters for use in typing dates (e.g., 25.XII.1953 г.).

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