Ý (ý) is a letter of the

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...

, Icelandic, Faroese, Slovak, and

Turkmen alphabet The Turkmen alphabet refers to variants of the Latin script, Latin alphabet, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic alphabet, or Arabic script, Arabic alphabet used for writing of the Turkmen language. The modified variant of the Latin script, Latin alphabe ...

s, as well being used in romanisations of

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

. In

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overseas Vietnamese, Vietnamese people living outside Vietna ...

it is a ''y'' with a high rising tonal diacritic. It was used in

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...

, Old Castillian, and Old Astur-Leonese. Originally, the letter Ý was formed from the letter Y and

acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin alphabet, Latin, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabet, Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accen ...

Usage

In Icelandic, Ý is the 29th letter of the alphabet, between Y and Þ. It is read as (short) or (long). In Turkmen, Ý represents the consonant , as opposed to Y, which represents the vowel sound . In Kazakh, Ý was suggested as a letter for the

voiced labio-velar approximant Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer ...

(as well as the diphthongs and ); the corresponding Cyrillic letter is У. The 2021 revision proposed the letter U, with the letter U with a macron (Ū) for the U sound in Kazakh. In the

and

Slovak language Slovak ( ; endonym: or ), is a West Slavic language of the Czech-Slovak languages, Czech–Slovak group, written in Latin script and formerly in Cyrillic script. It is part of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family, and is ...

s it represents a long form of the vowel ''y'' and cannot occur in initial position. It is pronounced , the same as Í; ý used to represent a distinct sound until it merged with the sound of í by the 15th century. Today it is used to distinguish

homophone A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning or in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (past tense of "rise"), or spelled differently, a ...

s, such as ''vít'' (to weave) and ''výt'' (to howl) in Czech. In the

Portuguese Language Portuguese ( or ) is a Western Romance language of the Indo-European language family originating from the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is the official language of Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tom� ...

, the letter was used until 1911 in Portugal and 1947 in Brazil. Ý was used in words like: Proparoxýtona, Caýdos and Fýgo. Ý was later substituted by Í or Ì. Ý was used in words originating from the

Greek Language Greek (, ; , ) is an Indo-European languages, Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic languages, Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece, Cyprus, Italy (in Calabria and Salento), south ...

. In romanizations of the

Russian language Russian is an East Slavic languages, East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic languages, Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is ...

, Ý is used for Ы́, the letter Ы with a diacritic marking stress.

Other uses

, means "

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

". The word is a shortened form of , which comes from Chinese 義大利 (''Yìdàlì'' in Mandarin, a phonetic rendering of the country's name). Ý does not exist in Modern Spanish, but the letter has survived in the proper name Aýna, a village in Spain, where it is pronounced as . Ý was used in

Early Modern Spanish Early Modern Spanish (also called Classical Spanish or Golden Age Spanish, especially in literary contexts) is the variant of Spanish used between the end of the 15th century and the end of the 17th century, marked by a series of phonological an ...

, and it can be observed by some archaic spellings such as the name Ýñigo for

Inigo Inigo is a masculine given name deriving from the Castilian rendering (Íñigo) of the medieval Basque name Eneko. Ultimately, the name means "my little (man)". While mostly seen among the Iberian diaspora, it also gained a limited popularity ...

or by the former spelling ýbamos for "íbamos" in older 16th–18th century Spanish writings.

Character mappings

References

{{Latin script, Y, acute Phonetic transcription symbols Latin letters with diacritics