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J, or j, is the tenth letter in 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'' ."J", ''Oxford English Dictionary,'' 2nd edition (1989) When used in the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
for the ''y'' sound, it may be called ''yod'' or ''jod'' (pronounced or ).


History

The letter ''J'' used to be used as the swash letter ''I'', used for the letter I at the end of
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 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. 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 An epistle (; el, ἐπιστολή, ''epistolē,'' "letter") is a writing directed or sent to a person or group of people, usually an elegant and formal didactic letter. The epistle genre of letter-writing was common in ancient Egypt as par ...
about the letters recently added in the Italian language") of 1524. Originally, 'I' and 'J' were different shapes for the same letter, both equally representing , , and ; however, Romance languages developed new sounds (from former and ) that came to be represented as 'I' and 'J'; therefore, English J, acquired from the
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
J, has a sound value quite different from (which represents the initial sound in the English language word "''y''et").


Pronunciation and use


English

In English, most commonly represents the
affricate An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. ...
. In
Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
, the phoneme was represented orthographically with and . Under the influence of Old French, which had a similar phoneme deriving from Latin , English scribes began to use (later ) to represent word-initial in Old English (for example, ''iest'' and, later ''jest''), while using elsewhere (for example, ''hedge''). Later, many other uses of (later ) were added in loanwords from French and other languages (e.g. ''adjoin'', ''junta''). The first English language book to make a clear distinction between and was the
King James Bible The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an Bible translations into English, English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and publis ...
1st Revision Cambridge 1629 and an English grammar book published in 1633. In loan words such as ''bijou'' or '' Dijon'', may represent . In some of these, including ''
raj Raj or RAJ may refer to: History * British Raj, the 1858–1947 rule of the British Crown over India * Company Raj, the 1757–1858 rule of the East India Company in South Asia * Licence Raj, the Indian system of elaborate licences, regulation ...
'', '' Azerbaijan'', '' Taj Mahal'', and '' Beijing'', the regular pronunciation is actually closer to the native pronunciation, making the use of an instance of hyperforeignism, a type of
hypercorrection In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is non-standard use of language that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a mi ...
. Occasionally, represents the original sound, as in ''
Hallelujah ''Hallelujah'' ( ; he, ''haləlū-Yāh'', meaning "praise Yah") is an interjection used as an expression of gratitude to God. The term is used 24 times in the Hebrew Bible (in the book of Psalms), twice in deuterocanonical books, and four tim ...
'' and '' fjord'' (see Yodh for details). In words of Spanish origin, where represents the voiceless velar fricative (such as ''jalapeño''), English speakers usually approximate with the voiceless glottal fricative . In English, is the fourth least frequently used letter in words, being more frequent only than , , and . It is, however, quite common in proper nouns, especially personal names.


Other languages


Germanic and Eastern-European languages

The great majority of Germanic languages, such as
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...
, Dutch, Icelandic,
Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
,
Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...
and Norwegian, use for the
palatal approximant The voiced palatal approximant, or yod, is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j, and in the Americanist phonetic no ...
, which is usually represented by the letter in English. Notable exceptions are English, Scots and (to a lesser degree) Luxembourgish. also represents in
Albanian Albanian may refer to: *Pertaining to Albania in Southeast Europe; in particular: **Albanians, an ethnic group native to the Balkans **Albanian language **Albanian culture **Demographics of Albania, includes other ethnic groups within the country ...
, and those
Uralic The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...
, Slavic and
Baltic languages The Baltic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 4.5 million people mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. Together with the Slavic lang ...
that use the Latin alphabet, such as Hungarian, Finnish,
Estonian Estonian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe * Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent * Estonian language * Estonian cuisine * Estonian culture See also

...
,
Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak,
Slovenian Slovene or Slovenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Slovenia, a country in Central Europe * Slovene language, a South Slavic language mainly spoken in Slovenia * Slovenes The Slovenes, also known as Slovenians ( sl, Sloven ...
, Latvian and
Lithuanian Lithuanian may refer to: * Lithuanians * Lithuanian language * The country of Lithuania * Grand Duchy of Lithuania * Culture of Lithuania * Lithuanian cuisine * Lithuanian Jews as often called "Lithuanians" (''Lita'im'' or ''Litvaks'') by other Jew ...
. Some related languages, such as Serbo-Croatian and
Macedonian Macedonian most often refers to someone or something from or related to Macedonia. Macedonian(s) may specifically refer to: People Modern * Macedonians (ethnic group), a nation and a South Slavic ethnic group primarily associated with North M ...
, also adopted into the Cyrillic alphabet for the same purpose. Because of this standard, the
lower case Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
letter was chosen to be used in the
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...
as the phonetic symbol for the sound.


Romance languages

In the Romance languages, has generally developed from its original palatal approximant value in Latin to some kind of fricative. In
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
, Portuguese,
Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
(except Valencian), and
Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania **Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language ***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language **Romanian cuisine, traditional ...
it has been fronted to the postalveolar fricative (like in English ''measure''). In Valencian and
Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language Occitan (; o ...
it has the same sound as in English, . In Spanish, by contrast, it has been both devoiced and backed from an earlier to a present-day or , with the actual phonetic realization depending on the speaker's dialect. Generally, ⟨j⟩ is not commonly present in modern standard Italian spelling. Only proper nouns (such as Jesi and
Letojanni Letojanni ( Sicilian: ''Letujanni'') is a ''comune'' (municipality), and coastal resort in the Province of Messina in the Italian region Sicily, located about east of Palermo and about southwest of Messina. Letojanni borders the following munic ...
), Latin words (
Juventus Juventus Football Club (from la, iuventūs, 'youth'; ), colloquially known as Juve (), is a professional Association football, football club based in Turin, Piedmont, Italy, that competes in the Serie A, the top tier of the Italian football leagu ...
), or those borrowed from foreign languages have . The proper nouns and Latin words are pronounced as the
palatal approximant The voiced palatal approximant, or yod, is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j, and in the Americanist phonetic no ...
, while words borrowed from foreign languages tend to follow that language's pronunciation of . Until the 19th century, was used instead of in
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, as a replacement for final ''-ii'', and in vowel groups (as in ''Savoja''); this rule was quite strict in official writing. is also used to render in dialectal spelling, ''e.g.'' Romanesco dialect (garlic; cf. Italian ''aglio'' ). The Italian novelist Luigi Pirandello used in vowel groups in his works written in Italian; he also wrote in his native Sicilian language, which still uses the letter to represent (and sometimes also ʒor j depending on its environment).


Other European Languages

The Maltese language is a Semitic language, not a Romance language; but has been deeply influenced by them (especially Sicilian) and it uses for the sound /j/ (cognate of the
Semitic Semitic most commonly refers to the Semitic languages, a name used since the 1770s to refer to the language family currently present in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta. Semitic may also refer to: Religions * Abrahamic religions ** ...
''yod''). In Basque, the diaphoneme represented by has a variety of realizations according to the regional dialect: (the last one is typical of Gipuzkoa).


Non-European languages

Among non-European languages that have adopted the Latin script, stands for in
Turkish Turkish may refer to: *a Turkic language spoken by the Turks * of or about Turkey ** Turkish language *** Turkish alphabet ** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation *** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey *** Turkish communities and mi ...
and
Azerbaijani Azerbaijani may refer to: * Something of, or related to Azerbaijan * Azerbaijanis * Azerbaijani language See also * Azerbaijan (disambiguation) * Azeri (disambiguation) * Azerbaijani cuisine * Culture of Azerbaijan The culture of Azerbaijan ...
, for in Tatar. stands for in
Indonesian Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to: * Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia ** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago ** Indonesian ...
, Somali,
Malay Malay may refer to: Languages * Malay language or Bahasa Melayu, a major Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore ** History of the Malay language, the Malay language from the 4th to the 14th century ** Indonesi ...
, Igbo, Shona, Oromo,
Turkmen Turkmen, Türkmen, Turkoman, or Turkman may refer to: Peoples Historical ethnonym * Turkoman (ethnonym), ethnonym used for the Oghuz Turks during the Middle Ages Ethnic groups * Turkmen in Anatolia and the Levant (Seljuk and Ottoman-Turkish desc ...
, and Zulu. It represents a voiced palatal plosive in Konkani,
Yoruba The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute ...
, and
Swahili Swahili may refer to: * Swahili language, a Bantu language official in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and widely spoken in the African Great Lakes * Swahili people, an ethnic group in East Africa * Swahili culture Swahili culture is the culture of ...
. In Kiowa, stands for a voiceless alveolar plosive, . stands for in the romanization systems of most of the Languages of India such as Hindi and
Telugu Telugu may refer to: * Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India *Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India * Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language ** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode S ...
and stands for in the Romanization of Japanese and Korean. For Chinese languages, stands for in Mandarin Chinese Pinyin system, the unaspirated equivalent of (). In Wade–Giles, stands for Mandarin Chinese . Pe̍h-ōe-jī of Hokkien and Tâi-lô for Taiwanese Hokkien, stands for and , or and , depending on accents. In Jyutping for Cantonese, stands for . The Royal Thai General System of Transcription does not use the letter , although it is used in some proper names and non-standard transcriptions to represent either or (the latter following Pali/Sanskrit root equivalents). In romanized Pashto, represents ځ, pronounced . In Greenlandic and in the ''Qaniujaaqpait'' spelling of the
Inuktitut Inuktitut (; , syllabics ; from , "person" + , "like", "in the manner of"), also Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, is one of the principal Inuit languages of Canada. It is spoken in all areas north of the tree line, including parts of the provinces o ...
language, is used to transcribe . Following Spanish usage, represents or similar sounds in many Latin-alphabet-based writing systems for indigenous languages of the Americas, such as in Mayan languages ( ALMG alphabet) and a glottal fricative in some spelling systems used for Aymara.


Related characters

* 𐤉 :
Semitic Semitic most commonly refers to the Semitic languages, a name used since the 1770s to refer to the language family currently present in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta. Semitic may also refer to: Religions * Abrahamic religions ** ...
letter Yodh, from which the following symbols originally derive * I i : Latin letter I, from which J derives * ȷ : Dotless j * ᶡ : Modifier letter small dotless j with stroke * ᶨ : Modifier letter small j with crossed-tail *
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...
-specific symbols related to J: * Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to J: ** ** ** * J with
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s: Ĵ ĵ J̌ ǰ Ɉ ɉ J̃ j̇̃


Computing codes

: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). 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 The voiced palatal approximant, or yod, is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j, and in the Americanist phonetic no ...
in the context of Greek script. It is called "Yot" in the Unicode standard, after the German name of the letter J. 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.


Wingdings smiley issue

In the Wingdings font by Microsoft, the letter "J" is rendered as a
smiley face A smiley, sometimes referred to as a smiley face, is a basic ideogram that represents a smiling face. Since the 1950s it has become part of popular culture worldwide, used either as a standalone ideogram, or as a form of communication, such a ...
(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 email. This autocorrection feature can be switched off or changed to a Unicode smiley.


Other uses

* In international licence plate codes, J stands for
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
. * In
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 ...
, ''j'' is one of the three imaginary units of
quaternion In mathematics, the quaternion number system extends the complex numbers. Quaternions were first described by the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. Hamilton defined a quatern ...
s. * Also in
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 ...
, ''j'' is one of the three unit vectors. * In the Metric system, J is the symbol for the joule, the
SI derived unit SI derived units are units of measurement derived from the seven base units specified by the International System of Units (SI). They can be expressed as a product (or ratio) of one or more of the base units, possibly scaled by an appropriate po ...
for energy. * In some areas of physics,
electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
and related fields, ''j'' is the symbol for the imaginary unit (the square root of −1) (in other fields the letter i is used, but this would be ambiguous as it is also the symbol for current). * A J can be a slang term for a joint (
marijuana Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant. Native to Central or South Asia, the cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various tra ...
cigarette) *In the United Kingdom under the old system (before 2001), a licence plate that begins with "J" for example "J123 XYZ" would correspond to a vehicle registered between August 1, 1991 and July 31, 1992. Again under the old system, a licence plate that ends with "J" for example "ABC 123J" would correspond to a vehicle that was registered between August 1, 1970 and July 31, 1971.


Other representations


References


External links

* * * {{Latin script, J} ISO basic Latin letters