From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - View original article

ISO basic Latin alphabet
Jump to: navigation, search
ISO basic Latin alphabet
Circle sheer blue 29.gif
Circle sheer blue 31.gif
Cursive script 'y' and capital 'Y'

Y (named wye[1] /ˈw/, plural wyes)[2] is the twenty-fifth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet (next to last letter) and represents either a vowel or a consonant in English.


In Latin, Y was named Y Graeca "Greek Y". This was pronounced as 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. In Romance languages, this history has led to the standard modern name of the letter: In Spanish, Y is called i/y griega, in Galician i grego, in Catalan i grega, in French and Romanian i grec, in Polish igrek - all meaning "Greek i" (except for Polish, where it is simply a phonetic transcription of the French name); in Dutch both Griekse ij and i-grec are used. The original Greek name upsilon has also been adapted into several modern languages; in German, for example, it is called Ypsilon, and in Italian the name is ípsilon or ípsilo. In Portuguese, both names are used (ípsilon and i grego). [1]

Old English borrowed Latin Y to write the native Old English sound /y/ (previously written with the rune yr ). The name of the letter may be related to 'ui' (or 'vi') in various medieval languages; in Middle English it was 'wi' /wiː/, which through the Great Vowel Shift became the Modern English 'wy' /waɪ/.


Semitic, Phoenician, Greek and Latin[edit]

An early Semitic version of the letter waw.
The later, Phoenician version of waw.

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 (Ȝȝ), which developed from Semitic gimel, as shown below.

Summary of the sources of Modern English "Y"
PhoenicianGreekLatin English (approximate times of changes)
Phoenician waw.svgUpsilon uc lc.svgV →U →V/U/UU →V/U/W
Y →Y (vowel /y/)Y (vowel /i/)Y (vowels)
Phoenician gimel.svgGamma uc lc.svgC →
G →Ȝ →G →
consonantal Y /j/Y (consonant)
Þ →Y /θ/TH


Y first appeared as the Greek letter upsilon. The Romans borrowed a small form of upsilon as the single letter V, representing both the vowel sound /u/ and the consonant /w/. (In modern ways of writing Latin, V is typically written as U, for a vowel, or V for the consonant.) However, this first loaning of upsilon into Latin is not the source of Modern English Y.

The usage of the capital form of upsilon, 'Y' 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 sound /y/, as found in modern French cru (raw), or German grün (green). Because it was not a native sound of Latin, it was usually pronounced /u/ or /i/. The latter pronunciation was the most common in the Classical period and was used by most people except Greek educated ones.[citation needed]

The letter was also used for other languages with a /y/ sound. Some words of Italic origin were re-spelled with a 'y': Latin silva ('forest') was commonly spelled sylva, in analogy with the Greek cognate and synonym ὕλη.[3]

The Roman Emperor Claudius proposed introducing a new letter into the Latin alphabet to transcribe the so-called sonus medius (a short vowel before labial consonants), which in inscriptions was sometimes used for Greek upsilon instead.[citation needed]

In Old English there was a native /y/ sound, and so both Latin U and Y were adapted for use. By 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. (Some dialects, however, retained the sound /y/ and spelled it U, following French usage.)[citation needed]

Likewise, Modern English vocalic Y is pronounced identically to the letter I. But Modern English uses it in only certain places, unlike Middle and early Modern English. It has three uses: for upsilon in Greek loan-words (system: Greek σύστημα), at the end of a word (rye, city; compare cities, where S is final), and before vowel endings (dy-ing, justify-ing).


As a consonant in English, Y is normally a palatal approximant, /j/ (year, German Jahr). This is possibly influenced by the Middle English letter yogh (Ȝȝ), which represented /j/. (Yogh's other sound, /ɣ/, came to be written gh in Middle English, and although the sound is no longer pronounced in standard modern English silent gh is common in many words where this sound was once present, such as through and caught, and in some cases an /f/ sound has resulted in modern English, as in rough or trough.)

Orthographic confusion with the letter thorn[edit]

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 /ðiː/, unstressed /ðə/). Ye (/jiː/) is purely a modern spelling pronunciation.[4]



The letter Y was originally established as a vowel. In the standard English alphabet, the letter Y is traditionally regarded as a consonant, but a survey of almost any English text will show that Y more commonly functions as a vowel.

As [j]:

As [i]:

As [ɪ]:

As [ai]:


In English morphology, -y is an adjectival suffix.

Other Germanic languages[edit]

Y has the sound values /y/ or /ʏ/ in the Scandinavian languages and in German. It can never be a consonant (except for loanwords), but can in German appear in diphthongs, as in the name Meyer, where it serves as a variant of i.

In Dutch, Y appears only in loanwords and names and usually represents /i/. It may sometimes be left out of the Dutch alphabet and replaced with the ligature IJ. In addition, the Y is occasionally used instead of an IJ, albeit very rarely. In the Afrikaans language, a descendant of Dutch, Y denotes the diphthong [ɛi], which may derive from the IJ ligature.

The Icelandic writing system uses y for /ɪ/ and ý for /i/. In Faroese, Y is always pronounced /i/. In both languages, it can also form part of diphthongs such as ey (in both languages) and oy (Faroese only).


In French orthography y is identical to i in pronunciation. It 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 French Y can have a diaresis (tréma) as in Moÿ-de-l'Aisne.


In the Spanish language, Y 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, 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/. In Spanish family names, y can separate the father's surname from the mother's surname as in Santiago Ramón y Cajal; another example is Maturin y Domanova, from the Aubrey-Maturin series. Catalan names use i for this. As a consonant y represents [ʝ] in Spanish. When coming before the sound /i/, the conjunction Y is replaced with E: español e inglés. This is to avoid pronouncing /i/ twice.

The letter Y is called i/y griega, literally meaning "Greek I", after the Greek letter ypsilon, or ye.


In Portuguese, Y (called ípsilon in Brazil, both ípsilon or i grego in Portugal) was, together with K and W, recently re-introduced 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, Spanish, Russian and Hebrew. 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 (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.

To a minor degree (often stigmatized as a signal of the lower classes) it is also true for common Western/Christian in Brazil, together with those of immigrant communities, although the practice is not possible in Portugal where names are required to follow official spelling conventions (see more at Portuguese name).

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 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.

Other languages[edit]

Italian, too, has Y (ipsilon) in a small number of loanwords.

In Polish and Guaraní, it represents the vowel [ɨ].

In Welsh it is pronounced [ə] in monosyllabic words or non-final syllables, and /ɨ/ or [i] (depending on the accent) in final syllables.

In Finnish and Albanian, Y is always pronounced [y].

In Lithuanian Y is the 15th letter 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 the Vietnamese letter i. Thus, Mỹ Lai does not rhyme but mỳ Lee does. There have been efforts to replace all such uses with i 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, Turkish, Quechua and the romanization of Japanese, Y 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 Japan, Ⓨ is a symbol used for resale price maintenance.

International Phonetic Alphabet[edit]

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, [y] corresponds to the close front rounded vowel, and the slightly different character [ʏ] corresponds to the near-close near-front rounded vowel.

It is indicative of the rarity of front rounded vowels that [y] is the rarest sound represented in the IPA by a letter of the Latin alphabet, being cross-linguistically less than half as frequent as [q] or [c] and only about a quarter as frequent as [x].[citation needed]

The IPA symbol [j] ("jod") represents the sound of the English letter y in the word yes.

Related letters and other similar characters[edit]

Computing codes[edit]

Numeric character reference&#89;&#x59;&#121;&#x79;
EBCDIC family232E8168A8
ASCII 1895912179

Other representations[edit]

NATO phoneticMorse code
ICS Yankee.svgSemaphore Yankee.svg⠽
Signal flagFlag semaphoreBraille


  1. ^ Also spelled wy.
  2. ^ "Y", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "wy", op. cit.
  3. ^ Oxford English Dictionary Second edition, 1989; online version June 2011, s.v. 'sylva'
  4. ^ Burchfield, R.W., ed. (1996), "Ye", The New Fowler's Modern English Usage (3rd ed.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 860 

External links[edit]

Letter Y with diacritics