Y


Y or y is the 25th and penultimate letter of the ISO basic Latin alphabet and the sixth vowel letter of the modern English alphabet. In the English writing system, it sometimes represents a vowel and sometimes a consonant, and in other orthographies it may represent a vowel or a consonant. Its name in English is wye, plural wyes.

Name

In Latin, Y was named I graeca, since the classical Greek sound, 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, i greca in Italian – all meaning "Greek I". The names igrek in Polish and i gờ-rét in Vietnamese are both phonetic borrowings of the French name. In Dutch, both Griekse ij and i-grec are used. 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 is still accepted. The original Greek name υ ψιλόν has also been adapted into several modern languages: in German, for example, it is called Ypsilon, in Icelandic it is ufsilon i, and in Italian the name is ipsilon or i greca. In Portuguese, both names are used. In Faroese, the letter is simply called seinna i because of its later place in the alphabet.
Old English borrowed Latin Y to write the native Old English sound . The name of the letter may be related to 'ui' in various medieval languages; in Middle English it was 'wi', which through the Great Vowel Shift became the Modern English 'wy'.

History

The oldest direct ancestor of English letter Y was the Semitic letter waw, 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. In Modern English, there is also some historical influence from the old English letter yogh, which developed from the Semitic gimel.

Vowel

The form of the modern letter Y is derived from the Greek letter upsilon. The Romans first borrowed a form of upsilon – directly from the Greek alphabet, or from the Etruscan alphabet – as the single letter V, which represented both the vowel sound and the semivowel consonant sound. This first loaning of upsilon into Latin is not the source of the Modern English Y.
The usage of the Greek Y form of upsilon as opposed to U, V, or W, 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 prestigious Attic dialect of Greek, which had the non-Latin vowel sound , or German grün ) in words that had been pronounced with /u/ in earlier Greek. Because was not a native sound of Latin, it was usually pronounced or. Some Latin words of Italic origin also came to be spelled with 'y': Latin silva was commonly spelled sylva, in analogy with the Greek cognate and synonym ὕλη.
The Roman Emperor Claudius proposed introducing a new letter into the Latin alphabet to transcribe the so-called sonus medius, which in inscriptions was sometimes used for Greek upsilon instead.
The letter Y was used to represent the sound /y/ in the writing systems of some other languages that adopted the Latin alphabet. In Old English and Old Norse, there was a native /y/ sound, and so Latin U, Y and I were all used to represent distinct vowel sounds. But, by the time of Middle English, had lost its roundedness and became identical to I. Therefore, many words that originally had I were spelled with Y, and vice versa. The distinction between and was also lost in later Icelandic and Faroese, making the distinction purely orthographic and historical, but not in the mainland Scandinavian languages, where the distinction is retained. It may be observed that a similar merger of into happened in Greek around the beginning of the 2nd millennium, making the distinction between iota and upsilon purely a matter of historical spelling there as well. In the West Slavic languages, Y was adapted as 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 . 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/ is retained.
In Modern English, Y can represent the same vowel sounds as the letter I. The use of the letter Y to represent 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, at the end of a word, and in place of I before the ending -ing.

Consonant

As a consonant in English, Y normally represents a palatal approximant, . This use was possibly influenced by the Middle English letter yogh, which could represent.

Confusion in writing with the letter thorn

When printing was introduced to Great Britain, Caxton and other English printers used Y in place of Þ, which did not exist in continental typefaces. From this convention comes 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. Pronouncing the article ye as yee is purely a modern spelling pronunciation.

Pronunciation and use

English

As :
As non-syllabic :
As :
As :
As :
Other:
In English morphology, -y is an adjectival suffix.
Y is the ninth least frequently used letter in the English language, with a frequency of about 2% in words.

Other languages

represents the sounds or in the Scandinavian languages. It can never be a consonant.
In Dutch and German, appears only in loanwords and proper names.
In Dutch, it usually represents. It may sometimes be left out of the Dutch alphabet and replaced with the digraph. In addition, and are occasionally used instead of Dutch and, albeit very rarely.
In German orthography, the pronunciation has taken hold since the 19th century in classical loanwords – for instance in words like typisch 'typical', Hyäne, Hysterie, mysteriös, Syndrom, System, Typ. It is also used for the sound in loanwords, such as Yacht, Yak, Yeti; however, e.g. yo-yo is spelled "Jo-Jo" in German, and yoghurt/yogurt/yoghourt "Jog. The letter is also used in many geographical names, e.g. Bayern Bavaria, Ägypten Egypt, Libyen Libya, Paraguay, Syrien Syria, Uruguay, Zypern Cyprus. Especially in German names, the pronunciations or occur as well – for instance in the name Meyer, where it serves as a variant of, cf. Meier, another common spelling of the name. In German the y is preserved in the plural form of some loanwords such as Babys babies and Partys parties, celebrations.
A that derives from the ligature occurs in the Afrikaans language, a descendant of Dutch, and in Alemannic German names. In Afrikaans, it denotes the diphthong. In Alemannic German names, it denotes long, for instance in Schnyder or Schwyz – the cognate non-Alemannic German names Schneider or Schweiz have the diphthong that developed from long.
In Icelandic writing system, due to the loss of the Old Norse rounding of the vowel /y/, the letters and are now pronounced identically to the letters and, namely as and respectively. The difference in spelling is thus purely etymological. In Faroese, too, the contrast has been lost, and is always pronounced, whereas the accented versions and designate the same diphthong . In both languages, it can also form part of diphthongs such as , pronounced, and, pronounced .
In French orthography, is pronounced as when a vowel and as as a consonant. It alternates orthographically with in the conjugations of some verbs, indicating a sound. In most cases when follows a vowel, it modifies the pronunciation of the vowel: , , . The letter has double function in the words payer, balayer, moyen, essuyer, pays, etc., but in some words it has only a single function: in bayer, mayonnaise, coyote; modifying the vowel at the end of proper names like Chardonnay and Fourcroy. In French can have a diaresis as in Moÿ-de-l'Aisne.
In Spanish, was used as a word-initial form of that was more visible. Hence, el yugo y las flechas was a symbol sharing the initials of Isabella I of Castille 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, the symbol of the Canal de Isabel II. Appearing alone as a word, the letter is a grammatical conjunction with the meaning "and" in Spanish and is pronounced. As a consonant, represents in Spanish. The letter is called i/y griega, literally meaning "Greek I", after the Greek letter ypsilon, or ye.
In Portuguese, was, together with and, recently reintroduced as 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 the letter e.g. Guaracy, Jandyra, Mayara – though placenames and loanwords derived from indigenous origins had the letter substituted for over time e.g. Nictheroy became Niterói.
Usual pronunciations are,, and . The letters and are regarded as phonemically not dissimilar, though 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 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.
In Polish, it represents the vowel , which is clearly different from, e.g. my and mi. No native Polish word begins with ; very few foreign words keep at the beginning, e.g. Yeti.
In Czech and Slovak, the distinction between the vowels expressed by Y and I has been lost, but consonants before orthographic Y are not palatalized, whereas they are before I.
In Welsh, it is usually pronounced in non-final syllables and or in final syllables.
In the Standard Written Form of the Cornish Language, it represents the and of Revived Middle Cornish and the and of Revived Late Cornish. It can also represent Tudor and Revived Late Cornish and and consequently be replaced in writing with. It is also used in forming a number of diphthongs. As a consonant it represents.
In Finnish and Albanian, is always pronounced.
In Estonian, is used in foreign proper names and is pronounced as in the source language. It is also unofficially used as a substitute for and is pronounced the same as in Finnish.
In Lithuanian, is the 15th letter and is a vowel. It is called the long i and is pronounced, like in English see.
When used as a vowel in Vietnamese, the letter represents the sound ; when it is a monophthong, it is functionally equivalent to the Vietnamese letter. Thus, Mỹ Lai does not rhyme, but mỳ Lee does. There have been efforts to replace all such uses with altogether, but they have been largely unsuccessful. As a consonant, it represents the palatal approximant. The capital letter is also used in Vietnamese as a given name.
In Aymara, Indonesian, Turkish, Quechua and the romanization of Japanese, Y is always a palatal consonant, denoting, as in English.
In Malagasy, the letter represents the final variation of.
In Turkmen, represents.
In Washo, lower-case represents a typical wye sound, while upper-case represents a voiceless wye sound, a bit like the consonant in English hue''.

Other systems

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, corresponds to the close front rounded vowel, and the related character corresponds to the near-close near-front rounded vowel.
The SI prefix for 1024 is yotta, abbreviated by the letter Y.

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

On German typewriter and computer keyboards, the positions of the letters Y and Z are swapped. In German, Y is used mainly in loanwords and names.

Other representations