This article is about the tenth letter of the Latin alphabet. For other uses, see J (disambiguation).

For technical reasons, "J#" redirects here. For the programming language, see J Sharp.

For the Cyrillic letter Ј, see Je (Cyrillic).

Jjȷ

(See below)

Writing cursive forms of J

Usage

Writing system Latin script

Type Alphabetic

Language of origin Latin language

Phonetic usage [j]

[dʒ]~[tʃ]

[x~h]

[ʒ]

[ɟ]

[ʝ]

[dz]

[tɕ]

[gʱ]

[t]~[dʑ]

[ʐ]

[ʃ]

[c̬]

[i]
/dʒeɪ/

/dʒaɪ/

Unicode codepoint U+004A, U+006A, U+0237

Alphabetical position 10

History

Development

D36

Yad

Yad

Yad

Yad

Early Yota

Ιι

Ii

Jjȷ

Time period 1524 to present

Descendants •Ɉ

• Tittle

•J

Sisters І

‫י‬

‫ي‬

‫ܝ‬
‫ی‬

Variations (See below)

Other

Other letters commonly used with j(x), ij

This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an
introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA §
Brackets and transcription delimiters.

ISO basic

Latin alphabet

AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz

vte

J, or j, is the tenth letter in the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Its usual name
in English is jay (pronounced /ˈdʒeɪ/), with a now-uncommon variant jy /ˈdʒaɪ/.[1][2] When used in the
International Phonetic Alphabet for the y sound, it may be called yod or jod (pronounced /ˈjɒd/ or
/ˈjoʊd/).[3]

Contents
1 History

2 Pronunciation and use

2.1 English

2.2 Other languages

2.2.1 Germanic and Eastern-European languages

2.2.2 Romance languages

2.2.3 Basque

2.2.4 Non-European languages

3 Related characters

4 Computing codes

4.1 Wingdings smiley issue

5 Other uses

6 Other representations

7 References

8 External links

History

Children's book from 1743, showing I and J considered as the same letter

The letter J used to be used as the swash letter I, used for the letter I at the end of Roman numerals
when following another I, as in XXIIJ or xxiij instead of XXIII or xxiii for the Roman numeral representing
23. A distinctive usage emerged in Middle High German.[4] 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 about the letters recently added in
the Italian language") of 1524.[5] Originally, 'I' and 'J' were different shapes for the same letter, both
equally representing /i/, /iː/, and /j/; however, Romance languages developed new sounds (from
former /j/ and /ɡ/) that came to be represented as 'I' and 'J'; therefore, English J, acquired from the
French J, has a sound value quite different from /j/ (which represents the initial sound in the English
language word "yet").
Pronunciation and use

List of pronunciations

Most common pronunciation: /j/ Languages in italics do not use the Latin alphabet

Language Dialect(s) Pronunciation

(IPA)

Environment Notes

Arabic Standard; most dialects /dʒ/ Latinization

Gulf /j/ Latinization

Sudanese, Omani, Yemeni /ɟ/ Latinization

Levantine, Maghrebi /ʒ/ Latinization

Azeri /ʒ/

Basque[6] Bizkaian /dʒ/

Lapurdian /j/ also used in southwest Bizkaian

Low Navarrese /ɟ/ also used in south Lapurdian

High Navarrese /ʃ/

Gipuzkoan /x/ also used in east Bizkaian

Zuberoan /ʒ/

Catalan /ʒ/ or /dʒ/

English /dʒ/

Finnish /j/

French /ʒ/

Hindi /dʒ/

Hokkien /dz/~/dʑ/

/z/~/ʑ/
Igbo /dʒ/

Indonesian /dʒ/

Japanese /dʑ/~/ʑ/ /ʑ/ and /dʑ/ distinct in some dialects, see Yotsugana

Kiowa /t/

Konkani/ɟ/

Korean North /ts/

/dz/ after vowels

South /tɕ/

/dʑ/ after vowels

Kurdish /ʒ/

Luxembourgish /j/

/ʒ/ Some words

Malay /dʒ/

Mandarin Standard /tɕ/ Pinyin latinization

/ʐ/ Wade–Giles latinization

Manx /dʒ/

Oromo /dʒ/

Pashto /dz/

Portuguese /ʒ/

Romanian /ʒ/

Scots /dʒ/

Shona /dʒ/

Somali /dʒ/

Spanish Standard /x/

Some dialects /h/

Swahili /ɟ/

Tamil /dʑ/

Tatar /ʐ/

Telugu /dʒ/

Turkish /ʒ/

Turkmen /dʒ/

Yoruba /ɟ/

Zulu /dʒ/

English

In English, ⟨j⟩ most commonly represents the affricate /dʒ/. In Old English, the phoneme /dʒ/ was
represented orthographically with ⟨cg⟩ and ⟨cȝ⟩.[7] Under the influence of Old French, which had a
similar phoneme deriving from Latin /j/, English scribes began to use ⟨i⟩ (later ⟨j⟩) to represent word-
initial /dʒ/ in Old English (for example, iest and, later jest), while using ⟨dg⟩ elsewhere (for example,
hedge).[7] Later, many other uses of ⟨i⟩ (later ⟨j⟩) were added in loanwords from French and other
languages (e.g. adjoin, junta). The first English language book to make a clear distinction between ⟨i⟩ and
⟨j⟩ was the King James Bible 1st Revision Cambridge 1629 and an English grammar book published in
1633.[8] In loan words such as bijou or Dijon, ⟨j⟩ may represent /ʒ/. In some of these, including raj,
Azerbaijan, Taj Mahal, and Beijing, the regular pronunciation /dʒ/ is actually closer to the native
pronunciation, making the use of /ʒ/ an instance of hyperforeignism, a type of hypercorrection.[9]
Occasionally, ⟨j⟩ represents the original /j/ sound, as in Hallelujah and fjord (see Yodh for details). In
words of Spanish origin, where ⟨j⟩ represents the voiceless velar fricative [x] (such as jalapeño), English
speakers usually approximate with the voiceless glottal fricative /h/.

In English, ⟨j⟩ is the fourth least frequently used letter in words, being more frequent only than ⟨z⟩, ⟨q⟩,
and ⟨x⟩. 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, Dutch, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish and
Norwegian, use ⟨j⟩ for the palatal approximant /j/, which is usually represented by the letter ⟨y⟩ in
English. Notable exceptions are English, Scots and (to a lesser degree) Luxembourgish. ⟨j⟩ also represents
/j/ in Albanian, and those Uralic, Slavic and Baltic languages that use the Latin alphabet, such as
Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Polish, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovenian, Latvian and Lithuanian.
Some related languages, such as Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian, also adopted ⟨j⟩ into the Cyrillic
alphabet for the same purpose. Because of this standard, the lower case letter was chosen to be used in
the IPA as the phonetic symbol for the sound.

Romance languages

In the Romance languages, ⟨j⟩ has generally developed from its original palatal approximant value in
Latin to some kind of fricative. In French, Portuguese, Catalan (except Valencian), and Romanian it has
been fronted to the postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ (like ⟨s⟩ in English measure). In Valencian it has the same
sound than in English, /dʒ/. In Spanish, by contrast, it has been both devoiced and backed from an
earlier /ʝ/ to a present-day /x/ or /h/,[10] 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), Latin words (Juventus), or those borrowed from foreign languages have ⟨j⟩. The
proper nouns and Latin words are pronounced as the palatal approximant /j/, while words borrowed
from foreign languages tend to follow that language's pronunciation of ⟨j⟩. Until the 19th century, ⟨j⟩ was
used instead of ⟨i⟩ in diphthongs, as a replacement for final -ii, and in vowel groups (as in Savoja); this
rule was quite strict in official writing. ⟨j⟩ is also used to render /j/ in dialectal spelling, e.g. Romanesco
dialect ⟨ajo⟩ [ajo] (garlic; cf. Italian aglio [aʎo]). The Italian novelist Luigi Pirandello used ⟨j⟩ in vowel
groups in his works written in Italian; he also wrote in his native Sicilian language, which still uses the
letter ⟨j⟩ to represent /j/ (and sometimes also [dʒ] or [gj], depending on its environment).[11] The
Maltese language is a Semitic language, not a Romance language; but has been deeply influenced by
them (especially Sicilian) and it uses ⟨j⟩ for the sound /j/ (cognate of the Semitic yod).

Basque

In Basque, the diaphoneme represented by ⟨j⟩ has a variety of realizations according to the regional
dialect: [j, ʝ, ɟ, ʒ, ʃ, x] (the last one is typical of Gipuzkoa).

Non-European languages

Among non-European languages that have adopted the Latin script, ⟨j⟩ stands for /ʒ/ in Turkish and
Azerbaijani, for /ʐ/ in Tatar. ⟨j⟩ stands for /dʒ/ in Indonesian, Somali, Malay, Igbo, Shona, Oromo,
Turkmen, and Zulu. It represents a voiced palatal plosive /ɟ/ in Konkani, Yoruba, and Swahili. In Kiowa, ⟨j⟩
stands for a voiceless alveolar plosive, /t/.
⟨j⟩ stands for /dʒ/ in the romanization systems of most of the Languages of India such as Hindi and
Telugu and stands for /dʑ/ in the Romanization of Japanese and Korean.

͡ in Mandarin Chinese Pinyin system, the unaspirated equivalent

For Chinese languages, ⟨j⟩ stands for /tɕ/
͡
of ⟨q⟩ (/tɕʰ/). In Wade–Giles, ⟨j⟩ stands for Mandarin Chinese /ʐ/. Pe̍h-ōe-jī of Hokkien and Tâi-lô for
Taiwanese Hokkien, ⟨j⟩ stands for /z/ and /ʑ/, or /d͡z/ and /d͡ʑ/, depending on accents. In Jyutping for
Cantonese, ⟨j⟩ stands for /j/.

The Royal Thai General System of Transcription does not use the letter ⟨j⟩, although it is used in some
proper names and non-standard transcriptions to represent either จ [tɕ] or ช [tɕʰ] (the latter following
Pali/Sanskrit root equivalents).

In romanized Pashto, ⟨j⟩ represents ‫ځ‬, pronounced [dz].

In the Qaniujaaqpait spelling of the Inuktitut language, ⟨j⟩ is used to transcribe /j/.

Related characters

𐤉 : Semitic 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[12]

ᶨ : Modifier letter small j with crossed-tail[12]

IPA-specific symbols related to J: ʝ ɟ ʄ ʲ

Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to J:

U+1D0A ᴊ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL J[13]

U+1D36 ᴶ MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL J[13]

U+2C7C ⱼ LATIN SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER J[14]

J with diacritics: Ĵ ĵ ǰ Ɉ ɉ J ̃ j ̇̃

Computing codes

Character information

PreviewJ j ȷ

Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER J LATIN SMALL LETTER J LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS J

Encodings decimalhex dec hex dec hex

Unicode 74 U+004A106 U+006A567 U+0237

UTF-8 74 4A 106 6A 200 183C8 B7

Numeric character reference J J j j ȷ ȷ

Named character reference ȷ

EBCDIC family 209 D1 145 91

ASCII 1 74 4A 106 6A

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).[15]

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 /j/ in the
context of Greek script. It is called "Yot" in the Unicode standard, after the German name of the letter J.
[16][17] 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.[18][19]

Wingdings smiley issue

In the Wingdings font by Microsoft, the letter "J" is rendered as a smiley face (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.[20] [21]
Other uses

In international licence plate codes, J stands for Japan.

In mathematics, j is one of the three imaginary units of quaternions.

Also in mathematics, j is one of the three unit vectors.

In the Metric system, J is the symbol for the joule, the SI derived unit for energy.

In some areas of physics, electrical engineering 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 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.[22]

Other representations

NATO phonetic Morse code

Juliet

audio speaker icon ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄

ICS Juliet.svg

Semaphore Juliet.svg

Sign language J.svg BSL letter J.svg ⠚

Signal flag Flag semaphore American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling) British manual alphabet
(BSL fingerspelling) Braille dots-245

Unified English Braille

References

"J", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989)

"J" and "jay", Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language,
Unabridged (1993)

"yod". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating
institution membership required.)

"Wörterbuchnetz". Retrieved 22 December 2016.

De le lettere nuωvamente aggiunte ne la lingua Italiana in Italian Wikisource.

Trask, R. L. (Robert Lawrence), 1944-2004. (1997). The history of Basque. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-
415-13116-2. OCLC 34514667.

Hogg, Richard M.; Norman Francis Blake; Roger Lass; Suzanne Romaine; R. W. Burchfield; John Algeo
(1992). The Cambridge History of the English Language. Cambridge University Press. p. 39. ISBN 0-521-
26476-6.

English Grammar, Charles Butler, 1633

Wells, John (1982). Accents of English 1: An Introduction. Cambridge, UN: Cambridge University Press. p.
108. ISBN 0-521-29719-2.

Penny, Ralph John (2002). A History of the Spanish Language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 0-521-01184-1.

Cipolla, Gaetano (2007). The Sounds of Sicilian: A Pronunciation Guide. Mineola, NY: Legas. pp. 11–12.
ISBN 9781881901518. Retrieved 2013-03-31.

Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS"
(PDF).

Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS"
(PDF).

Ruppel, Klaas; Rueter, Jack; Kolehmainen, Erkki I. (2006-04-07). "L2/06-215: Proposal for Encoding 3
Additional Characters of the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF).

The Unicode Standard, Version 8.0, p. 293 (at the very bottom)

Nick Nicholas, "Yot" Archived 2012-08-05 at archive.today

"Unicode Character 'GREEK LETTER YOT' (U+03F3)". Retrieved 22 December 2016.

"Unicode: Greek and Coptic" (PDF). Retrieved 2014-06-26.

"Unicode 7.0.0". Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 2014-06-26.

Pirillo, Chris (26 June 2010). "J Smiley Outlook Email: Problem and Fix!". Retrieved 22 December 2016.
Chen, Raymond (23 May 2006). "That mysterious J". The Old New Thing. MSDN Blogs. Retrieved 2011-
04-01.

"Car Registration Years | Suffix Number Plates | Platehunter". www.platehunter.com. Retrieved 2018-
12-20.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to J.

The dictionary definition of J at Wiktionary

The dictionary definition of j at Wiktionary

"J" . Encyclopædia Britannica. 15 (11th ed.). 1911.

vte

Latin script