Ulyanovsk in Russia has a monument dedicated to the letter ั (yo) which is often replaced by ะต (ye) due to awkward placement on keyboard (I suspect?).
On translit keyboard layout which I'm using it's no bother, so I can write ัััั as much as I like ๐
@kravietz oh no, it's not due to anything related to a keyboard. The letter has a long, arduous history ever since its inception in the XVIII century. Educated people argued it encouraged "common" pronunciation of words, there were also problems with producing a printed type for it. It wasn't even considered a part of the alphabet until the XX century.
But basically, the letter has just become an unlucky subject of "holy wars" where it's too easy to have Opinions about how things should be.
@kravietz by the way, the officially allowed (and commonly used) replacement of "ั" with "ะต" is probably the reason why the word "rรถntgen" is pronounced in Russian with a clear [ษ] sound. As a borrowed word, people could only derive its pronunciation from print, which was "ัะตะฝัะณะตะฝ", without the two dots.
This is interesting. I was always wondering why some (but statistically significant) English teachers in Russia pronounce words like "first" as ััััั or even ััััั. Might be unrelated but this ะต-ั confusion might be a hint.
@kravietz I think it's unrelated. This one is probably because "ั" is the closest we have phonetically to the shwa sound in "first", "girl", etc.