Y (minuscule: 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 wyeAlso spelled wy, and the plural is wyes. (pronounced ), plural wyes."Y", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "wy", op. cit.
In the English writing system, it mostly represents a vowel and seldom a consonant, and in other orthographies it may represent a vowel or a consonant.
Name In Latin, Y was named I graeca ("Greek I"), 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, and i greca in Italian – all meaning "Greek I". The names igrek in Polish and in Vietnamese are both phonetic borrowings of 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 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 i in Icelandic. Both names are used in Italian, ipsilon or i greca; likewise in Portuguese, ípsilon or i grego. In Czech, it is called both ypsilon, as well as tvrdé Y ("hard Y") to distinguish it from měkké I ("soft I"), even though modern Czech makes no phonetic difference between the two vowels by themselves. In Faroese, the letter is simply called seinna i ("later i") because of its later place in the alphabet. France has a commune called Y, pronounced , whose inhabitants go by the demonym upsilonienne/upsilonien in feminine and masculine form respectively.
History Proto-Sinaitic Phoenicianwaw Western GreekUpsilon LatinY The oldest direct ancestor of the letter Y was the Semitic letter waw (pronounced as ), 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 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 (as found in modern French cru (raw) or German grün (green)) in words that had been pronounced with in earlier Greek.
Because was not a native sound of Latin, Latin speakers had trouble pronouncing it, and it was usually pronounced . 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.Oxford English Dictionary Second edition, 1989; online version June 2011, s.v. 'sylva'
English
+Summary of the sources of Modern English "Y" Phoenician Greek Latin English (approximate times of changes) Old Middle Modern V → U → V/U/VV/UU → V/U/W Y → Y (vowel ) → Y (vowel ) → Y (vowels) C → G → Ᵹ (consonantal , or ) → Ȝ (consonantal , or ) →G/GHY (consonant)
Vowel The letter Y was used to represent the sound in Old English, so Latin , and were all used to represent distinct vowel sounds. But, by the time of Middle English, had lost its roundedness and became identical to ( and ). Therefore, many words that originally had were spelled with , and vice versa.
In Modern English, can represent the same vowel sounds as the letter . The use of 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 (system: Greek σύστημα), 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).
Consonant As a consonant in English, normally represents a palatal approximant, (year, yore). 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 , which came to be written gh in Middle English.
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 (thorn: Modern English th), 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 (stressed , unstressed ). Pronouncing the article ye as yee () is purely a modern spelling pronunciation.
Other languages In some of the Nordic languages, is used to represent the sound . The distinction between and has been lost in Icelandic and Faroese, making the distinction purely orthographic and historical. A similar merger of into 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, was adopted as a sign for the close central unrounded vowel ; later, merged with in Czech and Slovak, whereas Polish retains it with the pronunciation . Similarly, in Middle Welsh, came to be used to designate the vowels and in a way predictable from the position of the vowel in the word. Since then, has merged with in Southern Welsh dialects, but is retained.
Use in writing systems + Pronunciation of by language Orthography Phonemes Afrikaans Albanian Alemannic Azerbaijani Chamorro (pinyin) Cornish , , Czech Danish , Dutch , , , English , , , , , , Faroese Finnish German , , Guarani Icelandic Indonesian Khasi , Lithuanian Malagasy Manx Norwegian , Polish Slovak Spanish Swedish , , Turkish Turkmen Uzbek Vietnamese Welsh or , or , , or
English As : at the beginning of a word, as in yes at the beginning of a syllable before a vowel, as in beyond, lawyer, canyon As : under stress in an open syllable, as in my, type, rye, lying, pyre, tyre, typhoon in a stressed open syllable, as in hyphen, cycle, cylon in a pretonic open syllable, as in hypothesis, psychologist word-finally after a consonant in some words, such as ally, unify As : without stress at the end of multi-syllable word, as in happy, baby, lucky, accuracy used as a part of the digraph at the end of some words, as in money, key, valley As non-syllabic (part of the diphthongs , ): after vowels at the end of words, as in play, grey, boy As : in a closed syllable without stress and with stress as in myth, system, gymnastics in a closed syllable under stress as in typical, lyric in an open syllable without stress as in physique, oxygen Other: combining with as under stress (like in bird), as in myrtle, myrrh as (schwa) in words like martyr
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.
Other languages
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, representing the diphthong . In addition, and are occasionally used instead of Dutch and , although this spelling is archaic. 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, and Typ. It is also used for the sound in loanwords, such as Yacht (variation spelling: Jacht), Yak, and Yeti. However, yo-yo is spelled "Jo-Jo" in German, and yoghurt/yogurt/yoghourt is "Joghurt". The letter is also used in many geographical names, e.g. Bayern Bavaria, Ägypten Egypt, Libyen Libya, Paraguay, Syrien Syria, Uruguay, and Zypern Cyprus (but Jemen for Yemen and Jugoslawien for Yugoslavia). Especially in German names, the pronunciations or occur as well; for instance, in the name Meyer, where it serves as a variant of , 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'.
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 .
The letter represents the sounds or (sometimes long) in Old Norse and their descendants such as Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish with the exception of Icelandic. 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 .
In Icelandic writing system, due to the loss of the Old Norse rounding of the vowel , 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 (shortened to in some environments). In both languages, it can also form part of diphthongs such as (in both languages), pronounced , and , pronounced (Faroese only).
In French orthography, is pronounced as when a vowel (as in the words cycle, y) and as as a consonant (as in yeux, voyez). 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 (modifying the vowel as well as being pronounced as or ) 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 diaeresis (tréma) as in Moÿ-de-l'Aisne.
In Spanish, was used as a word-initial form of that was more visible. (German has used in a similar way.) Hence, 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 . 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 , literally meaning "Greek I", after the Greek letter ypsilon, or .