I - Wikipedia Jump to content Main menu Main menu move to sidebar hide Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Special pages Search Search Appearance Donate Create account Log in Personal tools Donate Create account Log in Contents move to sidebar hide (Top) 1 Name 2 History Toggle History subsection 2.1 Typographic variants 3 Use in writing systems Toggle Use in writing systems subsection 3.1 English 3.2 Other languages 3.3 Other systems 4 Other uses 5 Related characters Toggle Related characters subsection 5.1 Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet 5.2 Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets 6 Other representations Toggle Other representations subsection 6.1 Unicode 6.2 Other 7 References 8 External links Toggle the table of contents I 155 languages Acèh Afrikaans Alemannisch አማርኛ Aragonés Ænglisc العربية ܐܪܡܝܐ مصرى Asturianu Azərbaycanca تۆرکجه Basa Bali Žemaitėška Bikol Central Беларуская (тарашкевіца) Беларуская Betawi Български বাংলা Brezhoneg Bosanski Català 閩東語 / Mìng-dĕ̤ng-ngṳ̄ کوردی Corsu Qırımtatarca Čeština Kaszëbsczi Чӑвашла Cymraeg Dansk Deutsch Thuɔŋjäŋ Ελληνικά Emiliàn e rumagnòl Esperanto Español Eesti Euskara فارسی Fulfulde Suomi Na Vosa Vakaviti Føroyskt Français Nordfriisk Furlan Frysk Gaeilge 贛語 Gàidhlig Galego Avañe'ẽ Bahasa Hulontalo Gaelg Hausa 客家語 / Hak-kâ-ngî עברית हिन्दी Hrvatski Hornjoserbsce Kreyòl ayisyen Magyar Հայերեն Bahasa Indonesia Igbo Ilokano Ido Íslenska Italiano 日本語 ქართული Qaraqalpaqsha Jju Kumoring 한국어 کٲشُر Kurdî Коми Kernowek Latina Lëtzebuergesch Luganda Lombard Lietuvių Latviešu Malagasy Олык марий Македонски മലയാളം मराठी Bahasa Melayu မြန်မာဘာသာ مازِرونی Nāhuatl Napulitano Nederlands Norsk nynorsk Norsk bokmål Nouormand Occitan ਪੰਜਾਬੀ Pangasinan Polski Português Runa Simi Română Русский Sicilianu Scots Davvisámegiella Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Taclḥit සිංහල Simple English Slovenčina Slovenščina Anarâškielâ ChiShona Soomaaliga Српски / srpski Sranantongo Seeltersk Sunda Svenska Kiswahili தமிழ் ᥖᥭᥰ ᥖᥬᥲ ᥑᥨᥒᥰ తెలుగు ไทย Türkmençe Tagalog Setswana Toki pona Türkçe Twi Тыва дыл Українська اردو Oʻzbekcha / ўзбекча Vèneto Vepsän kel’ Tiếng Việt Volapük Winaray 吴语 Хальмг მარგალური ייִדיש Yorùbá 閩南語 / Bân-lâm-gí 粵語 中文 IsiZulu Edit links Article Talk English Read View source View history Tools Tools move to sidebar hide Actions Read View source View history General What links here Related changes Upload file Permanent link Page information Cite this page Get shortened URL Switch to legacy parser Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item Appearance move to sidebar hide From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Ninth letter of the Latin alphabet This article is about the Latin letter I. For the first person pronoun, see I (pronoun). For other uses, see I (disambiguation). For technical reasons, "ı" redirects here. For that letter, see Dotless I. For technical reasons, ":I" redirects here. For the neutral expression, see List of emoticons. Not to be confused with the sans-serif lowercase of the letter L. This article needs more citations. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "I" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message) as in the [[French language|French]] word {{wikt-lang|fr|générat'''i'''on}}</ref>|{{IPAblink|ɪ}}|{{IPAblink|ə}}|{{IPAblink|ɯ}}|{{IPAblink|a}}|{{IPA|[aɪ]}}|{{IPA|[ɑɪ]}}|{{IPA|[ɒɪ]}}|{{IPA|[ʌɪ]}}|{{IPA|[əɪ]}}}}"},"unicode":{"wt":"U+0049, U+0069"},"alphanumber":{"wt":"9"},"fam1":{"wt":"<hiero>D36</hiero>"},"fam2":{"wt":"[[File:Proto-semiticI-01.svg|class=skin-invert-image|20px|Yad]]"},"fam3":{"wt":"[[File:Proto-semiticI-02.svg|class=skin-invert-image|20px|Yad]]"},"fam4":{"wt":"[[Image:Phoenician yodh.svg|class=skin-invert-image|20px|Yad]]"},"fam5":{"wt":"[[File:Early Aramaic character - yud.svg|class=skin-invert-image|20px|Yad]]"},"fam6":{"wt":"[[File:Greek_Iota_normal.svg|class=skin-invert-image|20px|Early Yota]]"},"fam7":{"wt":"[[Iota|Ιι]]"},"fam8":{"wt":"[[𐌉]]"},"usageperiod":{"wt":"{{circa}} 700 BCE to present"},"children":{"wt":"{{flex list|[[Î]]|[[J]]|[[Ɉ]]|[[İ]]|[[Dotless I|ı]]|[[Tittle]]|[[ꟾ]]|[[ꟷ]]|[[ᛁ]]|[[ᴉ]]}}"},"sisters":{"wt":"{{flex list|[[І]]|[[Yodh|י]]|[[ܝ]]|[[ی]]|[[ࠉ]]|[[𐎊]]|[[ዪ]]|[[Ⴢ]]|[[wikt:ჲ|ⴢ]]|[[ჲ]]|[[☞]]|[[☚]]}}"},"equivalents":{"wt":""},"associates":{"wt":"[[List of Latin-script digraphs#I|i(x)]], [[IJ (digraph)|ij]], [[List of Latin-script trigraphs#I|i(x)(y)]]"},"direction":{"wt":"Left-to-right"},"image":{"wt":"File:Latin_letter_I.svg"},"imageclass":{"wt":"skin-invert-image"}},"i":0}}]}'>I I i Usage Writing system Latin script Type Alphabetic Language of origin Latin language Sound values [i] [ɨ] [j][1] [ɪ] [ə] [ɯ] [a] [aɪ] [ɑɪ] [ɒɪ] [ʌɪ] [əɪ] In Unicode U+0049, U+0069 Alphabetical position 9 History Development Ιι𐌉I i Time period c. 700 BCE to present Descendants Î J Ɉ İ ı Tittle ꟾ ꟷ ᛁ ᴉ Sisters І י ܝ ی ࠉ 𐎊 ዪ Ⴢ ⴢ ჲ ☞ ☚ Other Associated graphs i(x), ij, i(x)(y) Writing direction Left-to-right 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 v t e I (minuscule: i) is the ninth letter and the third vowel letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is i (pronounced /ˈaɪ/ ⓘ), plural i's or is.[2][3] Name In English, the name of the letter is the "long I" sound, pronounced /ˈaɪ/. In most other languages, its name matches the letter's pronunciation in open syllables. Pronunciation of the name of the letter ⟨i⟩ in European languages History Egyptian hieroglyph ꜥ Phoenician Yodh Western Greek Iota Etruscan I Latin I In the Phoenician alphabet, the letter may have originated in a hieroglyph for an arm that represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative (/ʕ/) in Egyptian, but was reassigned to /j/ (as in English "yes") by Semites because their word for "arm" began with that sound. This letter could also be used to represent /i/, the close front unrounded vowel, mainly in foreign words. The Greeks adopted a form of this Phoenician yodh as their letter iota (⟨Ι, ι⟩) to represent /i/, the same as in the Old Italic alphabet. In Latin (as in Modern Greek), it was also used to represent /j/ and this use persists in the languages that descended from Latin. The modern letter 'j' originated as a variation of 'i', and both were used interchangeably for both the vowel and the consonant, coming to be differentiated only in the 16th century.[4] Typographic variants In some sans serif typefaces, the uppercase ⟨I⟩ may be difficult to distinguish from the lowercase letter L, 'l', the vertical bar character '|', or the digit one '1'. In serifed typefaces, the capital form of the letter has both a baseline and a cap height serif, while the lowercase L generally has a hooked ascender and a baseline serif. The dot over the lowercase 'i' is sometimes called a tittle. The uppercase I does not have a dot, while the lowercase 'i' does in most Latin-derived alphabets. The dot can be considered optional and is usually removed when applying other diacritics. However, some schemes, such as the Turkish alphabet, have two kinds of I: dotted and dotless. In Turkish, dotted İ and dotless I are considered separate letters, representing a front and back vowel, respectively, and both have uppercase ('I', 'İ') and lowercase ('ı', 'i') forms. The uppercase I has two kinds of shapes, with serifs () and without serifs (). Usually these are considered equivalent, but they are distinguished in some extended Latin alphabet systems, such as the 1978 version of the African reference alphabet. In that system, the former is the uppercase counterpart of ɪ and the latter is the counterpart of 'i'. Use in writing systems Pronunciation of ⟨i⟩ by language Orthography Phonemes Standard Chinese (Pinyin) /i/ English /ɪ/, /aɪ/, /ə/, /ɜː/, /aɪə/, /j/ Esperanto /i/ French /i/, /j/ German /ɪ/, /iː/, /i/ Italian /i/, /iː/, /j/ Kurmanji (Hawar) /ɪ/ Portuguese /i/, /j/ Spanish /i/, /ʝ/ Turkish /ɯ/ for dotless ⟨I, ı⟩ /i/ for dotted ⟨İ, i⟩ English In Modern English spelling, ⟨i⟩ represents several different sounds, either the diphthong /aɪ/ ("long" ⟨i⟩) as in kite, the short /ɪ/ as in bill, or the ⟨ee⟩ sound /iː/ in the last syllable of machine. The diphthong /aɪ/ developed from Middle English /iː/ through a series of vowel shifts. In the Great Vowel Shift, Middle English /iː/ changed to Early Modern English /ei/, which later changed to /əi/ and finally to the Modern English diphthong /aɪ/ in General American and Received Pronunciation. Because the diphthong /aɪ/ developed from a Middle English long vowel, it is called "long" ⟨i⟩ in traditional English grammar.[citation needed] The letter ⟨i⟩ is the fifth most common letter in the English language.[5] The English first-person singular nominative pronoun is "I", pronounced /aɪ/ and always written with a capital letter. This pattern arose for basically the same reason that lowercase ⟨i⟩ acquired a dot: so it wouldn't get lost in manuscripts before the age of printing: The capitalized "I" first showed up about 1250 in the northern and midland dialects of England, according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology. Chambers notes, however, that the capitalized form didn't become established in the south of England until the 1700s (although it appears sporadically before that time). Capitalizing the pronoun, Chambers explains, made it more distinct, thus "avoiding misreading handwritten manuscripts."[6] Other languages In many languages' orthographies, ⟨i⟩ is used to represent the sound /i/[7] or, more rarely, /ɪ/. Other systems In the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨i⟩ represents the close front unrounded vowel. The small caps ⟨ɪ⟩ represents the near-close near-front unrounded vowel. Other uses Tourist information point (UK) Main article: I (disambiguation) The Roman numeral I represents the number 1.[8][9] In mathematics, a lowercase "i" is used to represent the unit imaginary number,[10] while an uppercase "I" serves to denote an identity matrix.[11] In some countries, a sign bearing the letter i or i indicates an information point, sometimes specifically for a visitor center. Related characters Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet I with diacritics: Ị ị Ĭ ĭ Î î Ǐ ǐ Ɨ ɨ Ï ï Ḯ ḯ Í í Ì ì Ȉ ȉ Į į Į́ Į̃ Ī ī Ī̀ ī̀ ᶖ[12] Ỉ ỉ Ȋ ȋ Ĩ ĩ Ḭ ḭ ᶤ[12] İ i and I ı : Latin letters dotted and dotless I IPA-specific symbols related to I: ɪ ɨ The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet uses various forms of the letter I:[13] U+1D35 ᴵ MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL I U+1D62 ᵢ LATIN SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER I U+1D09 ᴉ LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED I U+1D4E ᵎ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED I Other variations used in phonetic transcription: ᵻ[12]…