IJ (lowercase ij; ; also encountered as
deprecate
In several fields, especially computing, deprecation is the discouragement of use of some terminology, feature, design, or practice, typically because it has been superseded or is no longer considered efficient or safe, without completely removing ...
d
codepoint
In character encoding terminology, a code point, codepoint or code position is a numerical value that maps to a specific character. Code points usually represent a single grapheme—usually a letter, digit, punctuation mark, or whitespace—but ...
s IJ and ij) is a
digraph of the letters ''i'' and ''j''. Occurring in the
Dutch language
Dutch ( ) is a West Germanic language spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language. It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-Europea ...
, it is sometimes considered a
ligature
Ligature may refer to:
* Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure
** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry
* Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...
, or a letter in itself. In most fonts that have a separate character for ''ij'', the two composing parts are not connected but are separate
glyph
A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
s, which are sometimes slightly
kerned.
An ''ij'' in written Dutch usually represents the
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
. In standard Dutch and most Dutch
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...
s, there are two possible spellings for the diphthong : ''ij'' and ''ei''. That causes confusion for school children, who need to learn which words to write with ''ei'' and which with ''ij''. To distinguish between the two, the ''ij'' is referred to as the ("long ''ij''"), the ''ei'' as ("short ''ei''") or simply ''E – I''. In certain Dutch dialects (notably
West Flemish
West Flemish (''West-Vlams'' or ''West-Vloams'' or ''Vlaemsch'' (in French-Flanders), nl, West-Vlaams, french: link=no, flamand occidental) is a collection of Dutch dialects spoken in western Belgium and the neighbouring areas of France and ...
and
Zeelandic
Zeelandic ( zea, Zeêuws; nl, Zeeuws; vls, Zêeuws) is a group of Friso-Franconian language varieties spoken in the southwestern parts of the Netherlands. It is currently considered a Low Franconian dialect of Dutch, but there have been mov ...
) and the
Dutch Low Saxon
Dutch Low Saxon ( or ''Nederlaands Nedersaksies''; nl, Nederlands Nedersaksisch) are the Low Saxon dialects of the Low German language that are spoken in the northeastern Netherlands and are written there with local, unstandardised orthographie ...
dialects of
Low German
:
:
:
:
:
(70,000)
(30,000)
(8,000)
, familycolor = Indo-European
, fam2 = Germanic
, fam3 = West Germanic
, fam4 = North Sea Germanic
, ancestor = Old Saxon
, ancestor2 = Middle L ...
, a difference in the pronunciation of ''ei'' and ''ij'' is maintained. Whether it is pronounced identically to ''ei'' or not, the pronunciation of ''ij'' is often perceived as being difficult by people who do not have either sound in their native language.
The ''ij'' originally represented a 'long i'.
It used to be written as ''ii'', as in
Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
and
Estonian, but for orthographic purposes, the second ''i'' was eventually elongated, which is a reason why it is called . This can still be seen in the pronunciation of some words like (), and the etymology of some words like and in the Dutch form of several foreign placenames:
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
and
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
are spelled and . Nowadays, the pronunciation mostly follows the spelling, and they are pronounced with . The ''ij'' is distinct from the letter ''
y''. Particularly when writing capitals, Y used to be common instead of IJ in the past. That practice has long been deprecated, but the standard Dutch pronunciation of the letter Y is still ''ij'' when the alphabet is read.
In scientific disciplines such as
mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
and
physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
, the symbol ''y'' is usually pronounced ''ij''.
To distinguish the ''Y'' from ''IJ'' in common speech, however, ''Y'' is often called (meaning "Greek ''Y''"), a literal translation of ' (from
French, with the stress on ''grec'': ) or alternatively called ''
Ypsilon
Upsilon (, ; uppercase Υ, lowercase υ; el, ''ýpsilon'' ) or ypsilon is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, grc, Υʹ, label=none has a value of 400. It is derived from the Phoenician waw .
Ety ...
''. In modern Dutch, the letter ''Y'' occurs only in
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
s, proper nouns, or when deliberately spelled as Early Modern Dutch.
Afrikaans
Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans gra ...
(a
daughter language
In historical linguistics, a daughter language, also known as descendant language, is a language descended from another language, its mother language, through a process of genetic descent. If more than one language has developed from the same pro ...
of Dutch) has evolved in the exact opposite direction and ''IJ'' has been completely replaced by ''Y''.
However, the ancient use of Y in Dutch has survived in some personal names, particularly that of
Dutch immigrants in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
and
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
where as a result of
anglicization
Anglicisation is the process by which a place or person becomes influenced by Culture of England, English culture or Culture of the United Kingdom, British culture, or a process of cultural and/or linguistic change in which something non-English ...
, the ''IJ'' became a ''Y''. For example, the surname ' was often changed into ''Spyker'' and ''Snijder'' into ''
Snyder''.
History
''IJ'' probably developed out of ''ii'', representing a long sound (which it still does in some cases, such as in the word ' and in several Dutch dialects).
In the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
, the ''i'' was written without a
dot in handwriting, and the combination ''ıı'' was often confused with ''u''. Therefore, the second ''i'' was elongated: ''ıȷ''. Later, the dots were added, albeit not in
Afrikaans
Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans gra ...
, a language that has its roots in Dutch. In this language ''y'' is used instead.
Alternatively, the letter
J may have developed as a
swash
Swash, or forewash in geography, is a turbulence, turbulent layer of water that washes up on the beach after an incoming ocean surface wave, wave has broken. The swash action can move beach materials up and down the beach, which results in the ...
form of ''i''. In other European languages it was first used for the final ''i'' in
Roman numerals
Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, eac ...
when there was more than one ''i'' in a row, such as ''iij'' for "three", to prevent the fraudulent addition of an extra ''i'' to change the number. In Dutch, which had a native ''ii'', the "final ''i'' in a row elongated" rule was applied as well, leading to ''ij''.
Another theory is that ''IJ'' might have arisen from the lowercase ''y'' being split into two strokes in handwriting. At some time in the 15th or 16th century, this combination began to be spelled as a ligature ''ij''. An argument against this theory is that even in handwriting which does not join letters, ''ij'' is often written as a single sign.
Some time after the birth of this new letter, the sound which was now represented by ''ij'', in most cases, began to be pronounced much like ''ei'' instead, but words containing it were still spelled the same. Nowadays, ''ij'' in most cases represents the
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
, except in the suffix ''-lijk'', where it is usually pronounced as a
schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...
. In one special case, the Dutch word ''bijzonder'', the (old) sound is correct standard pronunciation, although is more common and is also allowed.
In
proper names
A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa'', ''Jupiter'', ''Sarah'', ''Microsoft)'' as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''continent, ...
, ''ij'' often appears instead of ''i'' at the end of other
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
s, where it does not affect the pronunciation: ''aaij'', ''eij'', ''oeij'', ''ooij'' and ''uij'' are pronounced identically to ''aai'' , ''ei'' , ''oei'' , ''ooi'' and ''ui'' . This derives from an old orthographic practice (also seen in older French and German) of writing ''y'' instead of ''i'' after another vowel; later, when ''y'' and ''ij'' came to be seen as interchangeable, the spellings with ''ij'' came to be used.
Spelling reforms and standardization have removed the redundant ''j''s in common words, but proper names continue to use these archaic spellings.
Status
![Dutch handwriting sample](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Dutch_handwriting_sample.png)
As the rules of usage for the ''IJ'' differ from those that apply to the many other digraphs in the Dutch language—in some situations behaving more as a single ligature or letter than a digraph—the ''IJ'' is not only confusing to foreigners, but also a source of discussion among native speakers of Dutch. Its actual usage in the
Netherlands
)
, anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands
, established_title = Before independence
, established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
and in Flanders (
Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...
) sometimes differs from the official recommendations.
Official status
Both the
Dutch Language Union
The Dutch Language Union ( Dutch: , NTU) is an international regulatory institution that governs issues regarding the Dutch language. It is best known for its spelling reforms which are promulgated by member states, grammar books, the Green B ...
and the
Genootschap Onze Taal
''Genootschap Onze Taal'' ('Society Our Language') is a Dutch society dedicated to the Dutch language. It was founded in 1931, initially to guard the language against what was then seen as creeping invasion of Germanisms into the language.
The so ...
consider the ''ij'' to be a digraph of the letters ''i'' and ''j''.
The descriptive dictionary ''
Van Dale Groot woordenboek van de Nederlandse taal'' states that ''ij'' is a "letter combination consisting of the signs i and j, used, in some words, to represent the diphthong ɛi."
[''Van Dale Groot woordenboek van de Nederlandse taal'': "lettercombinatie bestaande uit de tekens i en j, gebruikt om, in een aantal woorden, de tweeklank ɛi weer te geven"] The ''
Winkler Prins
The ''Winkler Prins'' is a Dutch-language encyclopedia, founded by the Dutch poet and clergyman Anthony Winkler Prins (1817–1908) and published by Elsevier. It has run through nine printed editions; the first, issued in 16 volumes from 1870 ...
'' encyclopedia states that ''ij'' is the 25th letter of the Dutch alphabet, placed between ''X'' and ''Y''. However, this definition is not generally accepted.
In words where ''i'' and ''j'' are in different syllables, they
do not form the digraph ''ij''. In
compound words
In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (less precisely, a word or sign) that consists of more than one stem. Compounding, composition or nominal composition is the process of word formation that creates compound lexemes. Compounding occurs when ...
, a
hyphen
The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. ''Son-in-law'' is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes (figure d ...
is added, as in ''gummi-jas''.
Netherlands
In the Netherlands, ''IJ'' is often used as a ligature:
* In Dutch primary schools, ''ij'' used to be taught as being the 25th letter of the alphabet, and some primary school writing materials still lists it as such. However, ''ij'' is according to Onze Taal not part of the Dutch alphabet and is usually sorted under the ''i'' as it is considered to consist of two letters.
* When a word starting with ''IJ'' is capitalised, the entire digraph is capitalised: , .
* On mechanical Dutch typewriters, there is a key that produces 'ij' (in a single letterspace, located directly to the right of the ''L''). However, this is not the case on modern computer keyboards.
* In word puzzles, ''ij'' often fills one square.
Flanders
In Flanders (Belgium), ''IJ'' is generally described in schools as a combination of two separate characters.
* As in the Netherlands, words that begin with ''IJ'' (and that are the first word in a sentence) usually capitalise the entire pair: ''
IJzer'', ''
IJzertoren
The Yser Towers ( nl, IJzertoren) are a monument complex near the Yser river at Diksmuide, West Flanders in Belgium. The first tower was built in 1928–30 to commemorate the Belgian soldiers killed on the surrounding Yser Front during World War ...
''.
Usage
Capitalisation
![Road sign with places having digraph IJ in Rotterdam area 2019-04-06](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Road_sign_with_places_having_digraph_IJ_in_Rotterdam_area_2019-04-06.jpg)
When a Dutch word starting with ''IJ'' is
capitalised, the entire digraph is capitalised, as in ''IJsselmeer'' or ''IJmuiden''.
Support for this property in software is limited. Poorly
localised text editors with
autocorrect
Autocorrection, also known as text replacement, replace-as-you-type or simply autocorrect, is an automatic data validation function commonly found in word processors and text editing interfaces for smartphones and tablet computers. Its principal ...
functionality may incorrectly convert the second of two initial capital letters in a word to lowercase; such improper spelling can thus be found in informal writing. Support on the internet is similarly inconsistent: Web pages styled with the
CSS
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...
property
text-transform: capitalize
are specified to be handled with
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
language-specific
case mapping rules (content language being indicated with HTML language attributes, such as
lang="nl"
for Dutch), but support for language-specific cases is limited to
Mozilla Firefox (version 14 and above) .
Collation
Dutch dictionaries
Notable dictionaries of the Dutch language include:
*''Etymologicum teutonicae linguae'', the first known Dutch dictionary published by Cornelius Kiliaan in 1599. It continues to be a unique source of obsolete words today.
*'' 't Nieuw Woorden-B ...
since about 1850 invariably sort ''ij'' as an ''i'' followed by a ''j'', i.e. between ''ih'' and ''ik''. This is the preferred sorting by the
Taalunie.
On the other hand, some encyclopedias, like the ''
Winkler Prins
The ''Winkler Prins'' is a Dutch-language encyclopedia, founded by the Dutch poet and clergyman Anthony Winkler Prins (1817–1908) and published by Elsevier. It has run through nine printed editions; the first, issued in 16 volumes from 1870 ...
'', 7th edition, sort ''ij'' as a single letter positioned between ''x'' and ''y''.
Telephone directories
A telephone directory, commonly called a telephone book, telephone address book, phonebook, or the white and yellow pages, is a listing of telephone subscribers in a geographical area or subscribers to services provided by the organization tha ...
as well as the
Yellow Pages
The yellow pages are telephone directories of businesses, organized by category rather than alphabetically by business name, in which advertising is sold. The directories were originally printed on yellow paper, as opposed to white pages for ...
in the Netherlands (but not those in Belgium) sort ''ij'' and ''y'' together, as if they were the same, between ''x'' and ''z''. Thanks to this, surnames like ''Bruijn'' and ''Bruyn'' which sound the same (and even look similar), can be found in the same area. However, ''Bruin'', though it sounds the same as well, is placed with "Brui-" and not with "Bruy-".
Abbreviations
When words or (first) names are shortened to their initials, in the Netherlands a word or proper name starting with ''IJ'' is abbreviated to ''IJ''. For example, ''IJsbrand Eises Ypma'' is shortened to ''IJ. E. Ypma''.
Note that the digraph "ei" in "Eises", like other digraphs in Dutch, is shortened to one letter.
Stress
![Bijna](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Bijna.png)
In Dutch orthography, ''ad hoc'' indication of
stress
Stress may refer to:
Science and medicine
* Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition
* Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
can be marked by placing an
acute accent
The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
on the vowel of the stressed syllable. In case of a diphthong or double vowel, both vowels should be marked with an acute accent; this also applies to the ''IJ'' (even though ''J'' by itself is not a vowel, the digraph ''IJ'' represents one distinct vowel sound). However, due to technical limitations the accent on the ''j'' is often omitted in electronic documents: "bíjna". Nevertheless, in
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
it is possible to
combine characters into a ''j'' with an acute accent—"bíj́na"—though this might not be supported or rendered correctly by some
fonts
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a " sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mod ...
or systems. This ''j́'' is the combination of the regular (soft-dotted) ''j'' (U+006A) and the combining acute accent ́ (U+0301).
Spelling
can be spelled out in two ways, depending on whether the speller considers ''ij'' to be one letter or not:
* ''V – R – IJ – D – A – G''
* ''V – R – I – J – D – A – G''
Wide inter-letter spacing
![Signboard-slijterij](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Signboard-slijterij.jpg)
When words are written with large inter-letter spacing, ''IJ'' is often, but not always, kept together. ''F r a n k r ij k'' or ''F r a n k r i j k''.
When words are written from top to bottom, with non-rotated letters, ''IJ'' is usually, but not always, kept together. Keeping it together is the preferred way.
Spelling of proper names
In Dutch names, interchangeability of ''i'', ''ij'' and ''y'' is frequent. Some names are changed unofficially for commercial reasons or by indifference:
*
Johan Cruijff/Cruyff, former football player and manager
*
Ruud van Nistelrooij/Nistelrooy, football player
*
Piet Heijn/Heyn/Hein, a
Dutch West India Company
The Dutch West India Company ( nl, Geoctrooieerde Westindische Compagnie, ''WIC'' or ''GWC''; ; en, Chartered West India Company) was a chartered company of Dutch merchants as well as foreign investors. Among its founders was Willem Usselincx ( ...
admiral
*
Dirk Kuijt/Kuyt, football player
*
Arie Luijendijk/Luyendyk, race-driver
*
Spijker/Spyker, car manufacturer
*
Anner Bijlsma/Bylsma, cellist
The Dutch football team of
Feyenoord
Feyenoord Rotterdam () is a Dutch professional football club (association football), football club in Rotterdam, which plays in the Eredivisie, the top tier in Dutch football. Founded as Wilhelmina in 1908, the club changed to various names bef ...
changed its name from the original "" to "" after achieving international successes. This was done as a reaction to foreign people often mispronouncing the name. The
Feijenoord district
Feijenoord (), not to be confused with the Feijenoord neighbourhood (which is located in the Feijenoord district), is a district in Rotterdam and is located south of the Nieuwe Maas. As of 1 January 2004 there were 72,320 inhabitants. The area is ...
in
Rotterdam
Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"N ...
, where the team is from, still writes its name using the original ''ij''.
Phonetic radio alphabet
In the Dutch phonetic
radio alphabet
A spelling alphabet ( also called by various other names) is a set of words used to represent the letters of an alphabet in oral communication, especially over a two-way radio or telephone. The words chosen to represent the letters sound sufficient ...
, the codeword represents the ''IJ''. This is clearly different from the codeword ''Ypsilon'', which is used to represent the ''Y''. Dutch and Belgian armed forces use the official
NATO phonetic alphabet
The (International) Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, commonly known as the NATO phonetic alphabet, is the most widely used set of clear code words for communicating the letters of the Roman alphabet, technically a ''radiotelephonic spellin ...
, "Y" is "Yankee" and "IJ" is spelled out "India Juliett".
Word games
In
crossword puzzle
A crossword is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white- and black-shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answ ...
s (except for
Scrabble
''Scrabble'' is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left t ...
– see next paragraph), and in the game
Lingo
Lingo, a contraction of language, often refers to jargon, but in a less formal or technical sense.
Lingo may also refer to:
Technology
* Lingo (programming language), one of several unrelated programming languages
* Lingo (VoIP Service operator ...
, ''IJ'' is considered one letter, filling one square, but the ''IJ'' and the ''Y'' are considered distinct. In other word games, the rules may vary.
The Dutch version of Scrabble has a ''Y'' with a face value of eight. Some players used it to represent ''IJ'' or ''Y''. The recent Dutch version comes with an example game, which clearly indicates that ''Y'' is only ''Y'', and ''IJ'' should be composed of ''I'' and ''J''. In previous editions of Scrabble there was a single IJ sign.
In word games that make a distinction between vowels and consonants, ''IJ'' is considered to be a vowel, if it is considered one letter. Whether ''Y'' is a vowel or a consonant, is another matter of discussion, since ''Y'' can represent both a vowel or a (half-) consonant.
Technical details
Print and handwriting
![Amsterdamse tram - De Red Crosser - from Flickr 2838709455 cropped lijnbus](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Amsterdamse_tram_-_De_Red_Crosser_-_from_Flickr_2838709455_cropped_lijnbus.jpg)
In print, the letter ''ÿ'' (lowercase
y with
diaeresis) and ''ij'' look very different, but
handwriting
Handwriting is the writing done with a writing instrument, such as a pen or pencil, in the hand. Handwriting includes both printing and cursive styles and is separate from formal calligraphy or typeface
A typeface (or font family) is ...
usually makes ''ÿ'', ''ij'' and ''Y'', ''IJ'' look identical. However, since ''y'' occurs only in loanwords, the letter ''ÿ'' is extremely rare (if not altogether nonexistent) in Dutch.
The ''long ij'' extends below the baseline and so is written with a long stroke. It is often written as a single sign, even in handwriting that does not join letters.
On some road signs in the Netherlands, ''IJ'' appears as a single glyph formed like a ''U'' with a break in the left-hand stroke.
Braille
Dutch Braille
Dutch Braille is the braille alphabet used for the Dutch language in the Netherlands and in Flanders.
History
In the Netherlands, braille was introduced in 1890. In Belgium, braille has been in use at least since the foundation of the Braillel ...
, which is used in the Netherlands, has represented by , which represents in other varieties of Braille. is written as .
In Belgium,
French Braille
French Braille is the original braille alphabet, and the basis of all others. The alphabetic order of French has become the basis of the international braille convention, used by most braille alphabets around the world. However, only the 25 basic ...
is used, in which is written simply as + : .
Encoding
The Dutch ''ij'' is not present in the
ASCII
ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of ...
code, nor in any of the
ISO 8859
ISO/IEC 8859 is a joint ISO and IEC series of standards for 8-bit character encodings. The series of standards consists of numbered parts, such as ISO/IEC 8859-1, ISO/IEC 8859-2, etc. There are 15 parts, excluding the abandoned ISO/IEC 8859-12 ...
character encoding
Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to Graphics, graphical character (computing), characters, especially the written characters of Language, human language, allowing them to be Data storage, stored, Data communication, transmi ...
s. Therefore, the digraph is most often encoded as an ''i'' followed by a ''j''. The ligature is present as a national-use character within the Dutch version of ISO 646, one implementation of which is of DEC's
National Replacement Character Set
The National Replacement Character Set (NRCS) was a feature supported by later models of Digital's (DEC) computer terminal systems, starting with the VT200 series in 1983. NRCS allowed individual characters from one character set to be replaced b ...
(NRCS)
aka
code page 1102,
and it also existed in the
Atari ST character set
The Atari ST character set is the character set of the Atari ST personal computer family including the Atari STE, TT and Falcon. It is based on code page 437, the original character set of the IBM PC, and like that set includes ASCII codes 3 ...
(but not in the
GEM character set The GEM character set is the character set of Digital Research's graphical user interface GEM on Intel platforms. It is based on code page 437, the original character set of the IBM PC, and like that set includes ASCII codes 32–126, extended co ...
for PCs) as well as in the
Lotus Multi-Byte Character Set
The Lotus Multi-Byte Character Set (LMBCS) is a proprietary multi-byte character encoding originally conceived in 1988 at Lotus Development Corporation with input from Bob Balaban and others. Created around the same time and addressing some of the ...
(LMBCS).
It is also present in
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
in the Latin Extended-A range as and .
[.] These characters are considered compatibility-decomposable.
They are included for compatibility and round-trip convertibility with legacy encodings, but their use is discouraged. Therefore, even with Unicode available, it is recommended to encode ''ij'' as two separate letters.
Nonetheless, some fonts use this code point for the ligated form of IJ if it exists.
Keyboards
While Dutch typewriters usually have a separate key for lowercase ''ij'', Belgian typewriters do not.
[Most Belgian typewriters use the French ]AZERTY
AZERTY () is a specific layout for the characters of the Latin alphabet on typewriter keys and computer keyboards. The layout takes its name from the first six letters to appear on the first row of alphabetical keys; that is, ( ). Similar t ...
keyboard, though some may use the Belgian
Belgian may refer to:
* Something of, or related to, Belgium
* Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent
* Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, such as Dutch, French, and German
*Ancient Belgian language, an extinct languag ...
one instead; in both cases minus the peripheral keys to the left of the 1 and to the right of the ù, and of course all modifiers (including AltGr) other than Shift and CapsLock. The latter keyboard is used on Belgian computers. Neither of them knows ij or IJ except as i+j or I+J. In the Netherlands, a
QWERTY
QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six Computer keyboard keys#Types, keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created f ...
computer keyboard layout is common. The standard US layout (often in "
International Mode") is widely used, although a specific but rarely used Dutch variant (KBD143) does exist. In Belgium, a specific Belgian variant of
AZERTY
AZERTY () is a specific layout for the characters of the Latin alphabet on typewriter keys and computer keyboards. The layout takes its name from the first six letters to appear on the first row of alphabetical keys; that is, ( ). Similar t ...
keyboard layout (KBD120) is widely used. None of these keyboards feature a key for ''ij'' or ''IJ''.
Not as a digraph
![Bijoux fout gespeld](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Bijoux_fout_gespeld.jpg)
If the ''i'' and the ''j'' belong to different syllables, such as in the mathematical term (syllablised "bi‧jec‧tie"), words with old spelling (syllablised "mi‧ni‧jurk"), (syllablised "ski‧jas"), foreign placenames like , , or person names like , , , they do not form a ligature or a single letter. Earlier statements about sorting ''ij'' on par with ''y'', keeping ''ij'' together in the
kerning
In typography, kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between Character (symbol), characters in a Typeface#Proportion, proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning adjusts the space between individual le ...
of printed texts, the single square in crossword puzzles, etc., do not apply.
References
Further reading
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External links
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* z.j.
{{Latin script
Latin-script digraphs
Dutch language
Vowel letters
Latin-script ligatures