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69-541: Y , or y , is the twenty-fifth and penultimate letter of the Latin alphabet , used in the modern English alphabet , the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. According to some authorities, it is the sixth (or seventh if including W ) vowel letter of the English alphabet. Its name in English is wye (pronounced / ˈ w aɪ / ), plural wyes . In the English writing system , it mostly represents

138-509: A lowercase form (also called minuscule ). Upper- and lowercase letters represent the same sound, but serve different functions in writing. Capital letters are most often used at the beginning of a sentence, as the first letter of a proper name or title, or in headers or inscriptions. They may also serve other functions, such as in the German language where all nouns begin with capital letters. The terms uppercase and lowercase originated in

207-640: A palatal approximant , /j/ ( y ear , y ore ). In this usage, the letter Y has replaced the Middle English letter yogh (Ȝȝ), which developed from the letter G , ultimately from Semitic gimel . Yogh could also represent other sounds, such as /ɣ/ , which came to be written gh in Middle English. When printing was introduced to Great Britain, Caxton and other English printers used Y in place of Þ ( thorn : Modern English th ), which did not exist in continental typefaces . From this convention comes

276-539: A variety of modern uses in mathematics, science, and engineering . People and objects are sometimes named after letters, for one of these reasons: The word letter entered Middle English c.  1200 , borrowed from the Old French letre . It eventually displaced the previous Old English term bōcstæf ' bookstaff '. Letter ultimately descends from the Latin littera , which may have been derived from

345-1003: A vowel and seldom a consonant , and in other orthographies it may represent a vowel or a consonant. In Latin, Y was named I graeca ("Greek I"), since the classical Greek sound /y/ , similar to modern German ü or French u , was not a native sound for Latin speakers, and the letter was initially only used to spell foreign words. This history has led to the standard modern names of the letter in Romance languages – i grego in Galician, i grega in Catalan, i grec in French and Romanian, and i greca in Italian – all meaning "Greek I". The names igrek in Polish and i gờ-rét in Vietnamese are both phonetic borrowings of

414-741: A Greek root and a Greek suffix, are modern compounds. A few of these also existed in Ancient Greek, such as crystallize , characterize , and democratize , but were probably coined independently in modern languages. This is particularly clear in cases like allegorize and synergize , where the Greek verbs ἀλληγορεῖν and συνεργεῖν do not end in -ize at all. Some English verbs with ultimate Greek etymologies, like pause and cycle , were formed as denominal verbs in English, even though there are corresponding Greek verbs, παῦειν/παυσ- and κυκλεῖν. Greek and English share many Indo-European cognates . In some cases,

483-533: A compound in Greek); acne < ἀκνή (erroneous) < ἀκμή 'high point, acme'. Some kept their Latin form, e.g. , podium < πόδιον . Others were borrowed unchanged as technical terms, but with specific, novel meanings: But by far the largest Greek contribution to English vocabulary is the huge number of scientific, medical, and technical neologisms that have been coined by compounding Greek roots and affixes to produce novel words which never existed in

552-441: A direct transliteration of Ancient Greek, including the Greek endings, rather than the traditional Latin-based spelling: nous (νοῦς), koine (κοινή), hoi polloi (οἱ πολλοί), kudos (κύδος), moron (μωρόν), kubernetes (κυβερνήτης). For this reason, the Ancient Greek digraph ει is rendered differently in different words—as i , following the standard Latin form: idol < εἴδωλον; or as ei , transliterating

621-567: A sign for the close central unrounded vowel /ɨ/ ; later, /ɨ/ merged with /i/ in Czech and Slovak, whereas Polish retains it with the pronunciation [ɘ] . Similarly, in Middle Welsh , ⟨y⟩ came to be used to designate the vowels /ɨ/ and /ɘ/ in a way predictable from the position of the vowel in the word. Since then, /ɨ/ has merged with /i/ in Southern Welsh dialects, but /ɘ/

690-511: A single vowel sound when transcribing a Greek εα, which was not a digraph , but simply a sequence of two vowels with hiatus , as in genealogy or pancreas ( cf. , however, ocean , ωκεανός); zeal (earlier zele ) comes irregularly from the η in ζήλος. Some sound sequences in English are only found in borrowings from Greek, notably initial sequences of two fricatives , as in sphere . Most initial /z/ sounds are found in Greek borrowings. The stress of borrowings via Latin generally follows

759-523: A vowel is more restricted in Modern English than it was in Middle and early Modern English. It occurs mainly in the following three environments: for upsilon in Greek loan-words ( s y stem : Greek σ ύ στημα), at the end of a word ( rye, city ; compare cities , where S is final), and in place of I before the ending -ing ( dy-ing , ty-ing ). As a consonant in English, ⟨y⟩ normally represents

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828-459: Is pentagons —the Greek form would be *pentagona ( cf. Plurals from Latin and Greek ). A few dozen English verbs are derived from the corresponding Greek verbs; examples are baptize , blame and blaspheme , stigmatize , ostracize , and cauterize . In addition, the Greek verbal suffix -ize is productive in Latin, the Romance languages , and English: words like metabolize , though composed of

897-417: Is also used in forming a number of diphthongs . As a consonant it represents [ j ] . In Danish , Norwegian , Swedish , Finnish , Karelian and Albanian , ⟨y⟩ is always pronounced [ y ] . In Estonian , ⟨y⟩ is used in foreign proper names and is pronounced as in the source language. It is also unofficially used as a substitute for ⟨ü⟩ and

966-424: Is always a palatal consonant , denoting [ j ] , as in English. In Malagasy , the letter ⟨y⟩ represents the final variation of /ɨ/ . In Turkmen , ⟨y⟩ represents [ ɯ ] . In Washo , lower-case ⟨y⟩ represents a typical wye sound, while upper-case ⟨Y⟩ represents a voiceless wye sound, a bit like the consonant in English hue . In

1035-456: Is considered to be a separate letter from ⟨n⟩ , though this distinction is not usually recognised in English dictionaries. In computer systems, each has its own code point , U+006E n LATIN SMALL LETTER N and U+00F1 ñ LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH TILDE , respectively. Letters may also function as numerals with assigned numerical values, for example with Roman numerals . Greek and Latin letters have

1104-592: Is indicated by the existence of precomposed characters for use with computer systems (for example, ⟨á⟩ , ⟨à⟩ , ⟨ä⟩ , ⟨â⟩ , ⟨ã⟩ .) In the following table, letters from multiple different writing systems are shown, to demonstrate the variety of letters used throughout the world. Greek words in English#The written form of Greek words in English The Greek language has contributed to

1173-470: Is only used in the digraphs "gy", "ly", "ny", "ty", in some surnames (e.g. Bátory ), and in foreign words. In Icelandic writing system , due to the loss of the Old Norse rounding of the vowel /y/ , the letters ⟨y⟩ and ⟨ý⟩ are now pronounced identically to the letters ⟨i⟩ and ⟨í⟩ , namely as /ɪ/ and /i/ respectively. The difference in spelling

1242-484: Is pronounced as [i] when a vowel (as in the words cycle , y ) and as [j] as a consonant (as in yeux , voyez ). It alternates orthographically with ⟨i⟩ in the conjugations of some verbs, indicating a [j] sound. In most cases when ⟨y⟩ follows a vowel, it modifies the pronunciation of the vowel: ⟨ay⟩ [ɛ] , ⟨oy⟩ [wa] , ⟨uy⟩ [ɥi] . The letter ⟨y⟩ has double function (modifying

1311-529: Is pronounced the same as in Finnish . In Lithuanian , ⟨y⟩ is the 15th letter (following ⟨į⟩ and preceding ⟨j⟩ in the alphabet) and is a vowel. It is called the long i and is pronounced /iː/ , like in English see . When used as a vowel in Vietnamese , the letter ⟨y⟩ represents the sound /i/ ; when it is a monophthong, it is functionally equivalent to

1380-692: Is rendered in various ways in English. The diphthongs αι and οι may be spelled in three different ways in English: The ligatures have largely fallen out of use worldwide; the digraphs are uncommon in American usage, but remain common in British usage. The spelling depends mostly on the variety of English, not on the particular word. Examples include: encyclopaedia / encyclopædia / encyclopedia ; haemoglobin / hæmoglobin / hemoglobin ; and oedema / œdema / edema . Some words are almost always written with

1449-431: Is retained. As / j / : As / aɪ / : As / i / : As non-syllabic [ɪ̯] (part of the diphthongs / eɪ / , / ɔɪ / ): As / ɪ / : Other: In English morphology , -y is an adjectival suffix. Y is the ninth least frequently used letter in the English language (after P , B , V , K , J , X , Q , and Z ), with a frequency of about 2% in words. ⟨y⟩ represents

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1518-622: Is still accepted. The original Greek name, υ ψιλόν ( upsilon ), has also been adapted into several modern languages. For example, it is called Ypsilon in German, ypsilon in Dutch, and ufsilon i in Icelandic. Both names are used in Italian, ipsilon or i greca ; likewise in Portuguese, ípsilon or i grego . In Faroese, the letter is simply called seinna i ("later i") because of its later place in

1587-510: Is thus purely etymological. In Faroese , too, the contrast has been lost, and ⟨y⟩ is always pronounced /i/ , whereas the accented versions ⟨ý⟩ and ⟨í⟩ designate the same diphthong /ʊi/ (shortened to /u/ in some environments). In both languages, it can also form part of diphthongs such as ⟨ey⟩ (in both languages), pronounced /ei/ , and ⟨oy⟩ , pronounced /ɔi/ (Faroese only). In French orthography , ⟨y⟩

1656-642: Is usually pronounced [ ə ] in non-final syllables and [ ɨ ] or [ i ] (depending on the accent) in final syllables. In the Standard Written Form of the Cornish Language , it represents the [ ɪ ] and [ ɪː ] of Revived Middle Cornish and the [ ɪ ] and [ iː ] of Revived Late Cornish . It can also represent Tudor and Revived Late Cornish [ ɛ ] and [ eː ] and consequently be replaced in writing with ⟨e⟩ . It

1725-630: The Afrikaans language , a descendant of Dutch, and in Alemannic German names. In Afrikaans, it denotes the diphthong [əi] . In Alemannic German names, it denotes long /iː/ , for instance in Schnyder [ˈʃniːdər] or Schwyz [ˈʃʋiːts] – the cognate non-Alemannic German names Schneider [ˈʃnaɪdər] or Schweiz [ʃʋaɪts] have the diphthong /aɪ/ that developed from long /iː/ . In Hungarian orthography , y

1794-505: The English lexicon in five main ways: Of these, the neologisms are by far the most numerous. Since the living Greek and English languages were not in direct contact until modern times, borrowings were necessarily indirect, coming either through Latin (through texts or through French and other vernaculars ), or from Ancient Greek texts, not the living spoken language . Some Greek words were borrowed into Latin and its descendants,

1863-484: The International Phonetic Alphabet , ⟨ y ⟩ corresponds to the close front rounded vowel , and the related character ⟨ ʏ ⟩ corresponds to the near-close near-front rounded vowel . [REDACTED] Letter (alphabet) A letter is a type of grapheme , the smallest functional unit within a writing system. Letters are graphemes that broadly correspond to phonemes ,

1932-578: The Italian piazza and Spanish plaza have the same origin, and have been borrowed into English in parallel. The word olive comes through the Romance from the Latin olīva , which in turn comes from the archaic Greek elaíwā ( ἐλαίϝᾱ ). A later Greek word, boútȳron ( βούτυρον ), becomes Latin butyrum and eventually English butter . A large group of early borrowings, again transmitted first through Latin, then through various vernaculars, comes from Christian vocabulary: In some cases,

2001-409: The Romance languages . English often received these words from French . Some have remained very close to the Greek original, e.g., lamp (Latin lampas ; Greek λαμπάς ). In others, the phonetic and orthographic form has changed considerably. For instance, place was borrowed both by Old English and by French from Latin platea , itself borrowed from πλατεία (ὁδός) , 'broad (street)';

2070-439: The names of polygons in mathematics, though the names of polyhedra are more idiosyncratic. Many Greek affixes such as anti- and -ic have become productive in English, combining with arbitrary English words: antichoice , Fascistic . Some words in English have been reanalyzed as a base plus suffix, leading to suffixes based on Greek words, but which are not suffixes in Greek ( cf. libfix ). Their meaning relates to

2139-491: The traditional English pronunciation of Latin , which depends on the syllable weight rules in Latin and ignores Greek stress. For example, in Greek, both ὑπόθεσις ( hypothesis ) and ἐξήγησις ( exegesis ) are accented on the antepenult , and indeed the penult has a long vowel in exegesis ; but because the penult of Latin exegēsis is heavy by Latin rules, the accent falls on the penult in Latin and therefore also in English. Though many English words derived from Greek through

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2208-465: The very rare technical term of rhetoric ); pentathlon, pentathlons not *pentathla ; demon, demons not *demones ; climaxes , not * climaces . Usage is mixed in some cases: schema, schemas or schemata ; lexicon, lexicons or lexica ; helix, helixes or helices ; sphinx, sphinges or sphinxes ; clitoris, clitorises or clitorides . And there are misleading cases: pentagon comes from Greek pentagonon , so its plural cannot be * pentaga ; it

2277-701: The 25th letter, and 19th consonant, of the Portuguese alphabet , in consequence of the Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement of 1990 . It is mostly used in loanwords from English, Japanese and Spanish. Loanwords in general, primarily gallicisms in both varieties, are more common in Brazilian Portuguese than in European Portuguese . It was always common for Brazilians to stylize Tupi -influenced names of their children with

2346-477: The French name. In Dutch, the letter is either only found in loanwords, or is practically equivalent to the digraph IJ . Hence, both Griekse ij and i-grec are used, as well as ypsilon . In Spanish, Y is also called i griega ; however, in the twentieth century, the shorter name ye was proposed and was officially recognized as its name in 2010 by the Real Academia Española , although its original name

2415-593: The Greek diphthera 'writing tablet' via Etruscan . Until the 19th century, letter was also used interchangeably to refer to a speech segment . Before alphabets, phonograms , graphic symbols of sounds, were used. There were three kinds of phonograms: verbal, pictures for entire words, syllabic, which stood for articulations of words, and alphabetic, which represented signs or letters. The earliest examples of which are from Ancient Egypt and Ancient China, dating to c.  3000 BCE . The first consonantal alphabet emerged around c.  1800 BCE , representing

2484-446: The Greek directly: eidetic (< εἰδητικός), deixis , seismic . Most plurals of words ending in -is are -es (pronounced [iːz]), using the regular Latin plural rather than the Greek -εις : crises , analyses , bases , with only a few didactic words having English plurals in -eis : poleis , necropoleis , and acropoleis (though acropolises is by far the most common English plural). Most learned borrowings and coinages follow

2553-794: The Greek language: So it is really the combining forms of Greek roots and affixes that are borrowed, not the words. Neologisms using these elements are coined in all the European languages, and spread to the others freely —including to Modern Greek , where they are considered to be reborrowings . Traditionally, these coinages were constructed using only Greek morphemes , e.g. , metamathematics , but increasingly, Greek, Latin, and other morphemes are combined. These hybrid words were formerly considered to be ' barbarisms ', such as: Some derivations are idiosyncratic, not following Greek compounding patterns, for example: Many combining forms have specific technical meanings in neologisms , not predictable from

2622-449: The Greek sense: In standard chemical nomenclature , the numerical prefixes are "only loosely based on the corresponding Greek words", e.g. octaconta- is used for 80 instead of the Greek ogdoeconta- '80'. There are also "mixtures of Greek and Latin roots", e.g. , nonaconta- , for 90, is a blend of the Latin nona- for 9 and the Greek -conta- found in words such as ἐνενήκοντα enenekonta '90'. The Greek form is, however, used in

2691-482: The Latin system, but there are some irregularities : Some words whose spelling in French and Middle English did not reflect their Greco-Latin origins were refashioned with etymological spellings in the 16th and 17th centuries: caracter became character and quire became choir . In some cases, a word's spelling clearly shows its Greek origin: Other exceptions include: In clusters such as ps- , pn- , and gn- which are not allowed in English phonotactics ,

2760-758: The Phoenicians, Semitic workers in Egypt. Their script was originally written and read from right to left. From the Phoenician alphabet came the Etruscan and Greek alphabets. From there, the most widely used alphabet today emerged, Latin, which is written and read from left to right. The Phoenician alphabet had 22 letters, nineteen of which the Latin alphabet used, and the Greek alphabet, adapted c.  900 BCE , added four letters to those used in Phoenician. This Greek alphabet

2829-413: The Vietnamese letter ⟨i⟩ . There have been efforts to replace all such uses with ⟨y⟩ altogether, but they have been largely unsuccessful. As a consonant, it represents the palatal approximant . The capital letter ⟨Y⟩ is also used in Vietnamese as a given name . In Aymara , Indonesian / Malaysian , Turkish , Quechua and the romanization of Japanese , ⟨y⟩

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2898-502: The alphabet. France has a commune called Y , pronounced /i/ , whose inhabitants go by the demonym upsilonienne / upsilonien in feminine and masculine form respectively. The oldest direct ancestor of the letter Y was the Semitic letter waw (pronounced as [w] ), from which also come F , U , V , and W . See F for details. The Greek and Latin alphabets developed from the Phoenician form of this early alphabet. The form of

2967-554: The borrowing languages: Finally, with the growth of tourism and emigration, some words reflecting modern Greek culture have been borrowed into English—many of them originally borrowings into Greek themselves: Many words from the Hebrew Bible were transmitted to the western languages through the Greek of the Septuagint , often without morphological regularization : Many Greek words, especially those borrowed through

3036-588: The cognates can be confused with borrowings. For example, the English mouse is cognate with Greek μῦς /mys/ and Latin mūs , all from an Indo-European word *mūs ; none of them is borrowed from another. Similarly, acre is cognate to Latin ager and Greek αγρός , but not a borrowing; the prefix agro- is a borrowing from Greek, and the prefix agri- a borrowing from Latin. Many Latin phrases are used verbatim in English texts— et cetera (etc.), ad nauseam , modus operandi (M.O.), ad hoc , in flagrante delicto , mea culpa , and so on—but this

3105-448: The consonants d, t, n (also l in Slovak) before orthographic (and historical) ⟨y⟩ are not palatalized, whereas they are before ⟨i⟩ . Therefore, ⟨y⟩ is called tvrdé y (hard y), while ⟨i⟩ is měkké i (soft i). ⟨ý⟩ can never begin any word, while ⟨y⟩ can never begin a native word. In Welsh , it

3174-438: The days of handset type for printing presses. Individual letter blocks were kept in specific compartments of drawers in a type case. Capital letters were stored in a higher drawer or upper case. In most alphabetic scripts, diacritics (or accents) are a routinely used. English is unusual in not using them except for loanwords from other languages or personal names (for example, naïve , Brontë ). The ubiquity of this usage

3243-556: The digraph or ligature: amoeba / amœba , rarely ameba ; Oedipus / Œdipus , rarely Edipus ; others are almost always written with the single letter: sphære and hæresie were obsolete by 1700; phænomenon by 1800; phænotype and phænol by 1930. The verbal ending -ίζω is spelled -ize in American English , and -ise or -ize in British English . Since the 19th century, a few learned words have been introduced using

3312-622: The distinct forms of ⟨S⟩ , the Greek sigma ⟨Σ⟩ , and Cyrillic es ⟨С⟩ each represent analogous /s/ phonemes. Letters are associated with specific names, which may differ between languages and dialects. Z , for example, is usually called zed outside of the United States, where it is named zee . Both ultimately derive from the name of the parent Greek letter zeta ⟨Ζ⟩ . In alphabets, letters are arranged in alphabetical order , which also may vary by language. In Spanish, ⟨ñ⟩

3381-505: The distinction purely orthographic and historical. A similar merger of /y/ into /i/ happened in Greek around the beginning of the 2nd millennium, making the distinction between iota (Ι, ι) and upsilon (Υ, υ) purely a matter of historical spelling there as well. The distinction is retained in Danish , Norwegian , and Swedish . In the West Slavic languages , ⟨y⟩ was adopted as

3450-485: The first corresponds to a vowel and the latter to a consonant, and both can correspond to a semivowel depending on its place in a word. Italian , too, has ⟨y⟩ ( ipsilon ) in a small number of loanwords. The letter is also common in some surnames native to the German-speaking province of Bolzano, such as Mayer or Mayr. In Guaraní , it represents the vowel [ ɨ ] . In Polish , it represents

3519-497: The full word they were shortened from, not the Greek meaning: Nostalgia was formed in German as a calque of Heimweh. Some Greek words were borrowed through Arabic and then Romance . Many are learned: Others are popular: A few words took other routes: Some Greek words have given rise to etymological doublets , being borrowed both through a later learned, direct route, and earlier through an organic, indirect route: Other doublets come from differentiation in

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3588-571: The late 7th and early 8th centuries. Finally, many slight letter additions and drops were made to the common alphabet used in the western world. Minor changes were made such as the removal of certain letters, such as thorn ⟨Þ þ⟩ , wynn ⟨Ƿ ƿ⟩ , and eth ⟨Ð ð⟩ . A letter can have multiple variants, or allographs , related to variation in style of handwriting or printing . Some writing systems have two major types of allographs for each letter: an uppercase form (also called capital or majuscule ) and

3657-601: The letter (which is present in most Romanizations of Old Tupi ) e.g. Guaracy, Jandyra, Mayara – though placenames and loanwords derived from indigenous origins had the letter substituted for ⟨ i ⟩ over time e.g. Nictheroy became Niterói . Usual pronunciations are / i / , [ j ] , [ ɪ ] and / ɨ / (the two latter ones are inexistent in European and Brazilian Portuguese varieties respectively, being both substituted by / i / in other dialects). The letters ⟨ i ⟩ and ⟨y⟩ are regarded as phonemically not dissimilar, though

3726-681: The literary route drop the inflectional endings ( tripod , zoology , pentagon ) or use Latin endings ( papyrus , mausoleum ), some preserve the Greek endings: In cases like scene and zone though the Greek words ended in -η, there is a silent e in English as the word is not directly derived from Greek. In the case of Greek endings, plurals sometimes follow the Greek rules : phenomenon, phenomena ; tetrahedron, tetrahedra ; crisis, crises ; hypothesis, hypotheses ; polis, poleis ; stigma, stigmata ; topos, topoi ; cyclops, cyclopes ; Normally, however, they do not: colon, colons not *cola (except for

3795-451: The literary tradition, are recognizable as such from their spelling. Latin had standard orthographies for Greek borrowings, including: These conventions, which originally reflected pronunciation, have carried over into English and other languages with historical orthography, like French. They make it possible to recognize words of Greek origin, and give hints as to their pronunciation and inflection . The romanization of some digraphs

3864-506: The modern letter Y is derived from the Greek letter upsilon . It dates back to the Latin of the first century BC, when upsilon was introduced a second time, this time with its "foot" to distinguish it. It was used to transcribe loanwords from the Attic dialect of Greek, which had the non-Latin vowel sound /y/ (as found in modern French cru (raw) or German grün (green)) in words that had been pronounced with /u/ in earlier Greek. Because [y]

3933-485: The orthography of these words was later changed to reflect the Greek—and Latin—spelling: e.g. , quire was respelled choir in the 17th century. Sometimes this was done incorrectly: ache is from a Germanic root; the spelling ache reflects Samuel Johnson 's incorrect etymology from ἄχος . Exceptionally, church came into Old English as cirice , circe via a West Germanic language. The Greek form

4002-663: The smallest functional units of sound in speech. Similarly to how phonemes are combined to form spoken words, letters may be combined to form written words. A single phoneme may also be represented by multiple letters in sequence, collectively called a multigraph . Multigraphs include digraphs of two letters (e.g. English ch , sh , th ), and trigraphs of three letters (e.g. English tch ). The same letterform may be used in different alphabets while representing different phonemic categories. The Latin H , Greek eta ⟨Η⟩ , and Cyrillic en ⟨Н⟩ are homoglyphs , but represent different phonemes. Conversely,

4071-533: The sounds /y/ or /ʏ/ (sometimes long) in the Scandinavian languages . In Danish and Swedish , its use as a semivowel is limited to loanwords , whereas in Norwegian , it appears as a semivowel in native words such as høyre /²hœʏ̯.rə/ . In Dutch and German , ⟨y⟩ appears only in loanwords and proper name : A ⟨y⟩ that derives from the ⟨ij⟩ ligature occurs in

4140-565: The spelling of the as ye in the mock archaism Ye Olde Shoppe . But, in spite of the spelling, pronunciation was the same as for modern the (stressed /ðiː/ , unstressed /ðə/ ). Pronouncing the article ye as yee ( /jiː/ ) is purely a modern spelling pronunciation . In some of the Nordic languages , ⟨y⟩ is used to represent the sound /y/ . The distinction between /y/ and /i/ has been lost in Icelandic and Faroese , making

4209-833: The symbol of the Canal de Isabel II . Appearing alone as a word, the letter ⟨y⟩ is a grammatical conjunction with the meaning " and " in Spanish and is pronounced /i/ . As a consonant, ⟨y⟩ represents [ ʝ ] in Spanish. The letter is called i/y griega , literally meaning "Greek I", after the Greek letter ypsilon , or ye . In Portuguese , ⟨y⟩ (called ípsilon in Brazil , and either ípsilon or i grego in Portugal ) was, together with ⟨k⟩ and ⟨w⟩ , recently reintroduced as

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4278-399: The time of Middle English , /y/ had lost its roundedness and became identical to ⟨i⟩ ( /iː/ and /ɪ/ ). Therefore, many words that originally had ⟨i⟩ were spelled with ⟨y⟩ , and vice versa. In Modern English, ⟨y⟩ can represent the same vowel sounds as the letter ⟨i⟩ . The use of ⟨y⟩ to represent

4347-437: The usual English pronunciation drops the first consonant ( e.g. , psychology) at the start of a word; compare gnostic [nɒstɪk] and agnostic [ægnɒstɪk]; there are a few exceptions, such as tmesis [t(ə)miːsɪs]. Similarly, initial x- is pronounced z . Ch is pronounced like k rather than as in "church": e.g. character, chaos. The consecutive vowel letters 'ea' are generally pronounced separately rather than forming

4416-553: The vowel [ ɘ ] (or, according to some descriptions, [ ɨ̞ ] ), which is clearly different from [ i ] , e.g. my (we) and mi (me). No native Polish word begins with ⟨y⟩ ; very few foreign words keep ⟨y⟩ at the beginning, e.g. yeti (pronounced [ˈjɛtʲi] ). In Czech and Slovak , the distinction between the vowels expressed by ⟨y⟩ and ⟨i⟩ , as well as by ⟨ý⟩ and ⟨í⟩ has been lost (similarly to Icelandic and Faroese), but

4485-468: The vowel as well as being pronounced as [j] or [i] ) in the words payer , balayer , moyen , essuyer , pays , etc., but in some words it has only a single function: [j] in bayer , mayonnaise , coyote ; modifying the vowel at the end of proper names like Chardonnay and Fourcroy . In French, ⟨y⟩ can have a diaeresis ( tréma ) as in Moÿ-de-l'Aisne . In Spanish , ⟨y⟩

4554-546: Was not a native sound of Latin, Latin speakers had trouble pronouncing it, and it was usually pronounced /i/ . Some Latin words of Italic origin also came to be spelled with 'y': Latin silva ('forest') was commonly spelled sylva , in analogy with the Greek cognate and synonym ὕλη . The letter Y was used to represent the sound /y/ in Old English , so Latin ⟨u⟩ , ⟨y⟩ and ⟨i⟩ were all used to represent distinct vowel sounds. But, by

4623-705: Was probably kȳriakḗ [ oikía ] ( κυριακή [οἰκία] 'lord's [house]'). In contrast, the Romance languages generally used the Latin words ecclēsia (French église ; Italian chiesa; Spanish iglesia ) or basilica (Romanian biserica ), both borrowed from Greek. Many more words were borrowed by scholars writing in Medieval and Renaissance Latin . Some words were borrowed in essentially their original meaning, often transmitted through Classical Latin : topic , type , physics , iambic , eta , necromancy , cosmopolite . A few result from scribal errors : encyclopedia < ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία 'the circle of learning' (not

4692-504: Was the first to assign letters not only to consonant sounds, but also to vowels . The Roman Empire further developed and refined the Latin alphabet, beginning around 500 BCE. During the fifth and sixth centuries, the development of lowercase letters began to emerge in Roman writing. At this point, paragraphs, uppercase and lowercase letters, and the concept of sentences and clauses still had not emerged; these final bits of development emerged in

4761-489: Was used as a word-initial form of ⟨i⟩ that was more visible. (German has used ⟨j⟩ in a similar way.) Hence, el yugo y las flechas was a symbol sharing the initials of Isabella I of Castille ( Ysabel ) and Ferdinand II of Aragon . This spelling was reformed by the Royal Spanish Academy and currently is only found in proper names spelled archaically, such as Ybarra or CYII ,

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