| Y | |
| Letter: | Y y |
| Script: | Latin script |
| Type: | Alphabet |
| Typedesc: | ic and logographic |
| Language: | Latin language |
| Unicode: | U+0059, U+0079 |
| Alphanumber: | 25 |
| Fam1: | |
| Fam6: | Υ υ |
| Usageperiod: | 54 to present |
| Associates: | y(x), ly, ny |
| Direction: | Left-to-right |
Y, or y, is the twenty-fifth and penultimate letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. According to some authorities, it is the sixth (or seventh if including W) vowel letter of the English alphabet.[1] Its name in English is wye[2] (pronounced), plural wyes.[3]
In the English writing system, it mostly represents a vowel and seldom a consonant, and in other orthographies it may represent a vowel or a consonant.
In Latin, Y was named I graeca ("Greek I"), since the classical Greek sound pronounced as //y//, similar to modern German ü or French u, was not a native sound for Latin speakers, and the letter was initially only used to spell foreign words. This history has led to the standard modern names of the letter in Romance languages – i grego in Galician, i grega in Catalan, i grec in French and Romanian, and i greca in Italian – all meaning "Greek I". The names igrek in Polish and Vietnamese: i gờ-rét in Vietnamese are both phonetic borrowings of the French name. In Dutch, the letter is either only found in loanwords, or is practically equivalent to the digraph IJ. Hence, both Griekse ij and i-grec are used, as well as ypsilon. In Spanish, Y is also called i griega; however, in the twentieth century, the shorter name ye was proposed and was officially recognized as its name in 2010 by the Real Academia Española, although its original name is still accepted.[4]
The original Greek name, υ ψιλόν (upsilon), has also been adapted into several modern languages. For example, it is called Ypsilon in German, ypsilon in Dutch, and Icelandic: ufsilon i in Icelandic. Both names are used in Italian, ipsilon or i greca; likewise in Portuguese, ípsilon or i grego.[5] In Faroese, the letter is simply called seinna i ("later i") because of its later place in the alphabet. France has a commune called Y, pronounced pronounced as //i//, whose inhabitants go by the demonym upsilonienne/upsilonien in feminine and masculine form respectively.[6]
The form of the modern letter Y is derived from the Greek letter upsilon. It dates back to the Latin of the first century BC, when upsilon was introduced a second time, this time with its "foot" to distinguish it. It was used to transcribe loanwords from the Attic dialect of Greek, which had the non-Latin vowel sound pronounced as //y// (as found in modern French cru (raw) or German grün (green)) in words that had been pronounced with pronounced as //u// in earlier Greek.
Because pronounced as /[y]/ was not a native sound of Latin, Latin speakers had trouble pronouncing it, and it was usually pronounced pronounced as //i//. Some Latin words of Italic origin also came to be spelled with 'y': Latin silva ('forest') was commonly spelled sylva, in analogy with the Greek cognate and synonym ὕλη.[7]
| Phoenician | Greek | Latin | English (approximate times of changes) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Old | Middle | Modern | |||
| V → | U → | V/U/VV/UU → | V/U/W | ||
| Y → | Y (vowel pronounced as //y//) → | Y (vowel pronounced as //i//) → | Y (vowels) | ||
| C → | |||||
| G → | Ᵹ (consonantal pronounced as //ɡ//, pronounced as //j// or pronounced as //ɣ//) → | Ȝ (consonantal pronounced as //ɡ//, pronounced as //j// or pronounced as //ɣ//) → | G/GH | ||
| Y (consonant) | |||||
The letter Y was used to represent the sound pronounced as //y// in Old English, so Latin (u), (y) and (i) were all used to represent distinct vowel sounds. But, by the time of Middle English, pronounced as //y// had lost its roundedness and became identical to (i) (pronounced as //iː// and pronounced as //ɪ//). Therefore, many words that originally had (i) were spelled with (y), and vice versa.
In Modern English, (y) can represent the same vowel sounds as the letter (i). The use of (y) to represent a vowel is more restricted in Modern English than it was in Middle and early Modern English. It occurs mainly in the following three environments: for upsilon in Greek loan-words (system: Greek σύστημα), at the end of a word (rye, city; compare cities, where S is final), and in place of I before the ending -ing (dy-ing, justify-ing).
As a consonant in English, (y) normally represents a palatal approximant, pronounced as //j// (year, yore). In this usage, the letter Y has replaced the Middle English letter yogh (Ȝȝ), which developed from the letter G, ultimately from Semitic gimel. Yogh could also represent other sounds, such as pronounced as //ɣ//, which came to be written gh in Middle English.
When printing was introduced to Great Britain, Caxton and other English printers used Y in place of Þ (thorn: Modern English th), which did not exist in continental typefaces. From this convention comes the spelling of the as ye in the mock archaism Ye Olde Shoppe. But, in spite of the spelling, pronunciation was the same as for modern the (stressed pronounced as //ðiː//, unstressed pronounced as //ðə//). Pronouncing the article ye as yee (pronounced as //jiː//) is purely a modern spelling pronunciation.
In some of the Nordic languages, (y) is used to represent the sound pronounced as //y//. The distinction between pronounced as //y// and pronounced as //i// has been lost in Icelandic and Faroese, making the distinction purely orthographic and historical. A similar merger of pronounced as //y// into pronounced as //i// happened in Greek around the beginning of the 2nd millennium, making the distinction between iota (Ι, ι) and upsilon (Υ, υ) purely a matter of historical spelling there as well. The distinction is retained in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish.
In the West Slavic languages, (y) was adopted as a sign for the close central unrounded vowel pronounced as //ɨ//; later, pronounced as //ɨ// merged with pronounced as //i// in Czech and Slovak, whereas Polish retains it with the pronunciation pronounced as /[ɘ]/. Similarly, in Middle Welsh, (y) came to be used to designate the vowels pronounced as //ɨ// and pronounced as //ɘ// in a way predictable from the position of the vowel in the word. Since then, pronounced as //ɨ// has merged with pronounced as //i// in Southern Welsh dialects, but pronounced as //ɘ// is retained.
As :
As :
As :
As non-syllabic pronounced as /[ɪ̯]/ (part of the diphthongs,):
As :
Other:
In English morphology, -y is an adjectival suffix.
Y is the ninth least frequently used letter in the English language (after P, B, V, K, J, X, Q, and Z), with a frequency of about 2% in words.
(y) represents the sounds pronounced as //y// or pronounced as //ʏ// (sometimes long) in the Scandinavian languages. In Danish and Swedish, its use as a semivowel is limited to loanwords, whereas in Norwegian, it appears as a semivowel in native words such as høyre pronounced as //²hœʏ̯.rə//.
In Dutch and German, (y) appears only in loanwords and proper name:
A (y) that derives from the (ij) ligature occurs in the Afrikaans language, a descendant of Dutch, and in Alemannic German names. In Afrikaans, it denotes the diphthong pronounced as /[əi]/. In Alemannic German names, it denotes long pronounced as //iː//, for instance in Schnyder pronounced as /de/ or Schwyz pronounced as /de/ – the cognate non-Alemannic German names Schneider pronounced as /de/ or Schweiz pronounced as /de/ have the diphthong pronounced as //aɪ// that developed from long pronounced as //iː//.
In Hungarian orthography, y is only used in the digraphs "gy", "ly", "ny", "ty", in some surnames (e.g. Bátory), and in foreign words.
In Icelandic writing system, due to the loss of the Old Norse rounding of the vowel pronounced as //y//, the letters (y) and (ý) are now pronounced identically to the letters (i) and (í), namely as pronounced as //ɪ// and pronounced as //i// respectively. The difference in spelling is thus purely etymological. In Faroese, too, the contrast has been lost, and (y) is always pronounced pronounced as //i//, whereas the accented versions (ý) and (í) designate the same diphthong pronounced as //ʊi// (shortened to pronounced as //u// in some environments). In both languages, it can also form part of diphthongs such as (ey) (in both languages), pronounced pronounced as //ei//, and (oy), pronounced pronounced as //ɔi// (Faroese only).
In French orthography, (y) is pronounced as pronounced as /[i]/ when a vowel (as in the words cycle, y) and as pronounced as /[j]/ as a consonant (as in yeux, voyez). It alternates orthographically with (i) in the conjugations of some verbs, indicating a pronounced as /[j]/ sound. In most cases when (y) follows a vowel, it modifies the pronunciation of the vowel: (ay) pronounced as /[ɛ]/, (oy) pronounced as /[wa]/, (uy) pronounced as /[ɥi]/. The letter (y) has double function (modifying the vowel as well as being pronounced as pronounced as /[j]/ or pronounced as /[i]/) in the words payer, balayer, moyen, essuyer, pays, etc., but in some words it has only a single function: pronounced as /[j]/ in bayer, mayonnaise, coyote; modifying the vowel at the end of proper names like Chardonnay and Fourcroy. In French, (y) can have a diaeresis (tréma) as in Moÿ-de-l'Aisne.In Spanish, (y) was used as a word-initial form of (i) that was more visible. (German has used (j) in a similar way.) Hence, Spanish; Castilian: [[yoke and arrows|el yugo y las flechas]] was a symbol sharing the initials of Isabella I of Castille (Ysabel) and Ferdinand II of Aragon. This spelling was reformed by the Royal Spanish Academy and currently is only found in proper names spelled archaically, such as Ybarra or CYII, the symbol of the Spanish; Castilian: [[Canal de Isabel II]]. Appearing alone as a word, the letter (y) is a grammatical conjunction with the meaning "and" in Spanish and is pronounced pronounced as //i//. As a consonant, (y) represents pronounced as /link/ in Spanish. The letter is called Spanish; Castilian: i/y griega, literally meaning "Greek I", after the Greek letter ypsilon, or Spanish; Castilian: ye.
In Portuguese, (y) (called ípsilon in Brazil, and either ípsilon or i grego in Portugal) was, together with (k) and (w), recently reintroduced as the 25th letter, and 19th consonant, of the Portuguese alphabet, in consequence of the Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement of 1990. It is mostly used in loanwords from English, Japanese and Spanish. Loanwords in general, primarily gallicisms in both varieties, are more common in Brazilian Portuguese than in European Portuguese. It was always common for Brazilians to stylize Tupi-influenced names of their children with the letter (which is present in most Romanizations of Old Tupi) e.g. Guaracy, Jandyra, Mayara – though placenames and loanwords derived from indigenous origins had the letter substituted for (i) over time e.g. Nictheroy became Niterói. Usual pronunciations are pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/ (the two latter ones are inexistent in European and Brazilian Portuguese varieties respectively, being both substituted by pronounced as /link/ in other dialects). The letters (i) and (y) are regarded as phonemically not dissimilar, though the first corresponds to a vowel and the latter to a consonant, and both can correspond to a semivowel depending on its place in a word.
Italian, too, has (y) (ipsilon) in a small number of loanwords. The letter is also common in some surnames native to the German-speaking province of Bolzano, such as Mayer or Mayr.
In Guaraní, it represents the vowel pronounced as /link/.
In Polish, it represents the vowel pronounced as /link/ (or, according to some descriptions, pronounced as /link/), which is clearly different from pronounced as /link/, e.g. my (we) and mi (me). No native Polish word begins with (y); very few foreign words keep (y) at the beginning, e.g. yeti (pronounced pronounced as /[ˈjɛtʲi]/).
In Czech and Slovak, the distinction between the vowels expressed by (y) and (i), as well as by (ý) and (í) has been lost (similarly to Icelandic and Faroese), but the consonants d, t, n (also l in Slovak) before orthographic (and historical) (y) are not palatalized, whereas they are before (i). Therefore, (y) is called tvrdé y (hard y), while (i) is měkké i (soft i). (ý) can never begin any word, while (y) can never begin a native word.
In Welsh, it is usually pronounced pronounced as /link/ in non-final syllables and pronounced as /link/ or pronounced as /link/ (depending on the accent) in final syllables.
In the Standard Written Form of the Cornish Language, it represents the pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/ of Revived Middle Cornish and the pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/ of Revived Late Cornish. It can also represent Tudor and Revived Late Cornish pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/ and consequently be replaced in writing with (e). It is also used in forming a number of diphthongs. As a consonant it represents pronounced as /link/.
In Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Karelian and Albanian, (y) is always pronounced pronounced as /link/.
In Estonian, (y) is used in foreign proper names and is pronounced as in the source language. It is also unofficially used as a substitute for (ü) and is pronounced the same as in Finnish.
In Lithuanian, (y) is the 15th letter (following (į) and preceding (j) in the alphabet) and is a vowel. It is called the long i and is pronounced pronounced as //iː//, like in English see.
When used as a vowel in Vietnamese, the letter (y) represents the sound pronounced as //i//; when it is a monophthong, it is functionally equivalent to the Vietnamese letter (i). There have been efforts to replace all such uses with (y) altogether, but they have been largely unsuccessful. As a consonant, it represents the palatal approximant. The capital letter (Y) is also used in Vietnamese as a given name.
In Aymara, Indonesian/Malaysian, Turkish, Quechua and the romanization of Japanese, ⟨y⟩ is always a palatal consonant, denoting pronounced as /link/, as in English.
In Malagasy, the letter (y) represents the final variation of pronounced as //ɨ//.
In Turkmen, (y) represents pronounced as /link/.
In Washo, lower-case (y) represents a typical wye sound, while upper-case (Y) represents a voiceless wye sound, a bit like the consonant in English hue.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, (IPA|y) corresponds to the close front rounded vowel, and the related character (IPA|ʏ) corresponds to the near-close near-front rounded vowel.
See main article: article and Y (disambiguation).
Semitic letter Waw, from which the following symbols originally derive: