J

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J is the tenth letter in the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Its normal name in English is jay (pronounced /dʒeɪ/), with a now-uncommon variant jy /dʒaɪ/. When used in the International Phonetic Alphabet for the yodh phoneme, it may be called yod (pronounced /jɒd/ or /jɔːd/).

History

The letter J originated as a swash letter i, used for the letter i at the end of Roman numerals when following another i, as in xxiij instead of xxiii for the Roman numeral 23. A distinctive usage emerged in Middle High German. Gian Giorgio Trissino (1478–1550) was the first known writer to distinguish I and J as representing separate sounds, in his Epistola del Trissino de le lettere nuvamente aggiunte in la lingua italiana ("Trissino's epistle about the letters recently added in the Italian language") of 1524. Originally, both I and J represented /i/, /iː/, and /j/; but Romance languages developed new sounds (from former /j/ and /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 /j/ (originally represented by I) in other languages.

Usage

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.

The letter J is used to represent the sound /dʒ/, as in "jam", "jolly", and "major". In some other languages, it represents other sounds, such as /j/ in German and many Slavic languages, or /x/ in Spanish, where it represents a voiceless velar fricative.

Typography

In typography, the lowercase letter j has a dot above, known as a tittle, which is sometimes omitted in handwriting or certain stylish typefaces. In some older typefaces, the uppercase J was actually constructed as a rotated uppercase I.

Computing codes

In Unicode, the capital J is codepoint U+004A and the lowercase j is U+006A. In ASCII, capital J is 74 and lowercase j is 106; both can be represented by the same number in EBCDIC.

Cultural significance

The letter J is often used in educational contexts as an example of a letter that can represent different sounds, depending on the language. It is also a common first letter in many personal names, making it significant in naming traditions across various cultures.

See also

• Letter (alphabet)
• English alphabet
• Phoneme
• Typography