| J | |
| Letter: | J j |
| Script: | Latin script |
| Type: | Alphabet |
| Typedesc: | ic |
| Language: | Latin language |
| Unicode: | U+004A, U+006A, U+0237 |
| Alphanumber: | 10 |
| Fam1: | |
| Fam7: | Ιι |
| Fam9: | I i |
| Usageperiod: | 14th century[1] to present |
| Children: | Ɉ Tittle J |
| Associates: | j(x), ij |
| Direction: | Left-to-right |
J, or j, is the tenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its usual name in English is jay (pronounced), with a now-uncommon variant jy .[2] [3]
When used in the International Phonetic Alphabet for the voiced palatal approximant (the sound of "y" in "yes") it may be called yod or jod (pronounced or).
The letter J used to be used as the swash letter I, used for the letter I at the end of Roman numerals when following another I, as in XXIIJ or xxiij instead of XXIII or xxiii for the Roman numeral twenty-three. A distinctive usage emerged in Middle High German.[4] Gian Giorgio Trissino (1478–1550) was the first to explicitly distinguish I and J as representing separate sounds, in his Ɛpistola del Trissino de le lettere nuωvamente aggiunte ne la lingua italiana ("Trissino's epistle about the letters recently added in the Italian language") of 1524.[5] Originally, 'I' and 'J' were different shapes for the same letter, both equally representing pronounced as //i//, pronounced as //iː//, and pronounced as //j//; however, Romance languages developed new sounds (from former pronounced as //j// and pronounced as //ɡ//) that came to be represented as 'I' and 'J'; therefore, English J, acquired from the French J, has a sound value quite different from pronounced as //j// (which represents the initial sound in the English language word "yet").
| Afrikaans | pronounced as /link/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Albanian | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Arabic romanization | pronounced as /link/ or pronounced as /link/ | |
| Azeri | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Basque | pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ | |
| Cantonese (Yale) | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Cantonese (Jyutping) | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Catalan | pronounced as /link/ | |
| (Pinyin) | pronounced as /link/ | |
| (Wade–Giles) | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Czech | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Danish | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Dutch | pronounced as /link/ | |
| English | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Esperanto | pronounced as /link/ or pronounced as /link/ | |
| Estonian | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Filipino | pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ | |
| Finnish | pronounced as /link/ | |
| French | pronounced as /link/ | |
| German | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Greenlandic | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Hindi (Hunterian) | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Hokkien (Pe̍h-ōe-jī, Tâi-lô) | pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | |
| Hungarian | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Icelandic | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Igbo | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Indonesian | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Italian | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Japanese (Hepburn) | pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ | |
| Khmer (ALA-LC) | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Kiowa | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Konkani (Roman) | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Korean (RR) | pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | |
| Kurdish | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Luxembourgish | pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ | |
| Latvian | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Lithuanian | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Malay | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Maltese | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Manx | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Norwegian | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Oromo | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Pashto romanization | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Polish | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Portuguese | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Romanian | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Scots | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Serbo-Croatian | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Shona | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Slovak | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Slovenian | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Somali | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Spanish | pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | |
| Swahili | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Swedish | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Tamil romanization | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Tatar | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Telugu romanization | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Turkish | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Turkmen | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Urdu (Roman) | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Yoruba | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Zulu | pronounced as /link/ |
In English, (j) most commonly represents the affricate pronounced as /ink/. In Old English, pronounced as //dʒ// was represented orthographically with (cᵹ)[6] (equivalent to (cg), as (ᵹ) in Old English was simply the regular form of the letter G, called Insular G). Middle English scribes began to use (i) (later (j)) to represent word-initial pronounced as //dʒ// under the influence of Old French, which had a similarly pronounced phoneme deriving from Latin pronounced as //j// (for example, iest and later jest), while the same sound in other positions could be spelled as (dg) (for example, hedge). The first English language books to make a clear distinction in writing between (i) and (j) were the King James Bible 1st Revision Cambridge 1629 and an English grammar book published in 1633.[7]
Later, many other uses of (i) (later (j)) were added in loanwords from French and other languages (e.g. adjoin, junta). In loanwords such as bijou or Dijon, (j) may represent pronounced as //ʒ//, as in modern French. In some loanwords, including raj, Azerbaijan, Taj Mahal and Beijing, the regular pronunciation pronounced as //dʒ// is actually closer to the native pronunciation, making the use of pronounced as //ʒ// an instance of hyperforeignism, a type of hypercorrection.[8] Occasionally, (j) represents its original pronounced as //j// sound, as in Hallelujah and fjord. In words of Spanish origin, such as jalapeño, English speakers usually pronounce (j) as the voiceless glottal fricative, an approximation of the Spanish pronunciation of (j) (usually transcribed as a voiceless velar fricative pronounced as /link/, although some varieties of Spanish use glottal pronounced as /link/).
In English, (j) is the fourth least frequently used letter in words, being more frequent only than (z), (q), and (x). It is, however, quite common in proper nouns, especially personal names.
In the Romance languages, (j) has generally developed from its original palatal approximant value in Latin to some kind of fricative. In French, Portuguese, Catalan (except Valencian), and Romanian it has been fronted to the postalveolar fricative pronounced as /link/ (like (s) in English measure). In Valencian and Occitan, it has the same sound as in English, pronounced as /link/. In Spanish, by contrast, it has been both devoiced and backed from an earlier pronounced as /link/ to a present-day pronounced as /link/ or pronounced as /link/,[9] with the actual phonetic realization depending on the speaker's dialect.
⟨j⟩ is not commonly used in modern standard Italian spelling. Only proper nouns (such as Jesi and Letojanni), Latin words (Juventus), or words borrowed from foreign languages have (j). The proper nouns and Latin words are pronounced with the palatal approximant pronounced as /link/, while words borrowed from foreign languages tend to follow that language's pronunciation of (j). Until the 19th century, (j) was used instead of (i) in diphthongs, as a replacement for final -ii, and in vowel groups (as in Savoja); this rule was quite strict in official writing. (j) is also used to render pronounced as /link/ in dialectal spelling, e.g. Romanesco dialect (ajo) pronounced as /[ajo]/ (garlic; Italian aglio pronounced as /[aʎo]/). The Italian novelist Luigi Pirandello used (j) in vowel groups in his works written in Italian; he also wrote in his native Sicilian language, which still uses the letter (j) to represent pronounced as /link/ (and sometimes also [dʒ] or [gj], depending on its environment).[10]
The great majority of Germanic languages, such as German, Dutch, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian, use (j) for the palatal approximant pronounced as /link/, which is usually represented by the letter (y) in English. Other than English, notable exceptions are Scots, where it represents pronounced as /link/, and Luxembourgish, where it represents both pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/.
The letter also represents pronounced as /link/ in Albanian, the Uralic languages spoken in Europe, and those Slavic and Baltic languages that use the Latin alphabet, such as Polish, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovenian, Latvian and Lithuanian. Some related languages, such as Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian, also adopted (j) into the Cyrillic alphabet for the same purpose.
The Maltese language, though a Semitic language, has been deeply influenced by the Romance languages (especially Sicilian), and also uses (j) for pronounced as /link/.
In Basque, the diaphoneme represented by (j) has a variety of realizations according to the regional dialect: pronounced as /[j, ʝ, ɟ, ʒ, ʃ, x]/ (the last one is typical of Gipuzkoa).
Among non-European languages that have adopted the Latin script, (j) stands for pronounced as /link/ in Turkish and Azerbaijani, for pronounced as /link/ in Tatar, and for pronounced as /link/ in Indonesian, Somali, Malay, Igbo, Shona, Oromo, Turkmen, and Zulu. It represents a voiced palatal plosive pronounced as /link/ in Konkani, Yoruba and Swahili. In Kiowa, (j) stands for a voiceless alveolar plosive, pronounced as /link/.
(j) stands for pronounced as /link/ in the romanization systems of most of the languages of India, such as Hindi and Telugu, and stands for pronounced as /link/ in the romanization of Japanese and Korean.
For Chinese languages, (j) stands for pronounced as /link/ in the Mandarin Chinese pinyin system, the unaspirated equivalent of (q) (pronounced as /link/). In Wade–Giles, (j) stands for Mandarin Chinese pronounced as /link/. Pe̍h-ōe-jī of Hokkien and Tâi-lô for Taiwanese Hokkien, (j) stands for pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/, or pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/, depending on accents. In Cantonese, (j) stands for pronounced as /link/ in Jyutping and pronounced as /link/ in Yale.
The Royal Thai General System of Transcription does not use the letter (j), although it is used in some proper names and non-standard transcriptions to represent either Thai: จ pronounced as /[tɕ]/ or Thai: ช pronounced as /[tɕʰ]/ (the latter following Pali/Sanskrit root equivalents).
In romanized Pashto, (j) represents ځ, pronounced pronounced as /[dz]/.
In Greenlandic and in the Qaniujaaqpait spelling of the Inuktitut language, (j) is used to transcribe pronounced as /link/.
Following Spanish usage, (j) represents pronounced as /[x]/ or similar sounds in many Latin-alphabet-based writing systems for indigenous languages of the Americas, such as pronounced as /[χ]/ in Mayan languages (ALMG alphabet) and a glottal fricative [h] in some spelling systems used for Aymara.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, (IPA|j) is used for the voiced palatal approximant, and a superscript ⟨ʲ⟩ is used to represent palatalization.
See main article: article and J (disambiguation).
1 Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
Unicode also has a dotless variant, ȷ (U+0237). It is primarily used in Landsmålsalfabet and in mathematics. It is not intended to be used with diacritics since the normal j is softdotted in Unicode (that is, the dot is removed if a diacritic is to be placed above; Unicode further states that, for example, i+ ¨ ≠ ı+¨ and the same holds true for j and ȷ).[15]
In Unicode, a duplicate of 'J' for use as a special phonetic character in historical Greek linguistics is encoded in the Greek script block as ϳ (Unicode U+03F3). It is used to denote the palatal glide pronounced as //j// in the context of Greek script. It is called "Yot" in the Unicode standard, after the German name of the letter J.[16] [17] An uppercase version of this letter was added to the Unicode Standard at U+037F with the release of version 7.0 in June 2014.[18] [19]
In the Wingdings font by Microsoft, the letter "J" is rendered as a smiley face, sometimes creating confusion in emails after formatting is removed and a smiley turns back into an out-of-context "J".[20] (This is distinct from the Unicode code point U+263A, which renders as ☺︎). In Microsoft applications, ":)" is automatically replaced by a smiley rendered in a specific font face when composing rich text documents or HTML emails. This autocorrection feature can be switched off or changed to a Unicode smiley.[21]