Ý



Ý (ý) is a letter of the Czech, Icelandic, Faroese, the Slovak, and Turkmen alphabets, as well being used in romanisations of Russian. In Vietnamese it is a y with a high rising tonal diacritic. It was used in Old Norse, Old Castillian, and Old Astur-Leonese. Originally, the letter Ý was formed from the letter Y and acute accent.

Usage
In Icelandic, Ý is the 29th letter of the alphabet, between Y and Þ. It is read as /i/ (short) or /iː/ (long).

In Turkmen, Ý represents the consonant /j/, as opposed to Y, which represents the vowel sound /ɯ/.

In Kazakh, Ý was suggested as a letter for the voiced labio-velar approximant (as well as the diphthongs /ʊw/ and /ʉw/); the corresponding Cyrillic letter is У. The 2021 revision proposed the letter U, with the letter U with a macron (Ū) for the U sound in Kazakh. In the Portuguese Language, the letter was used until 1911 in Portugal and 1947 in Brazil. Ý was used in words like: Proparoxýtona, Caýdos and Fýgo. Ý was later substituted by Í or Ì. Ý was used in words originating from the Greek Language.

In the Czech and Slovak languages it represents a long form of the vowel y and cannot occur in initial position. It is pronounced, the same as Í; ý used to represent a distinct sound until it merged with the sound of í by the 15th century. Today it is used to distinguish homophones, such as vít (to weave) and výt (to howl) in Czech.

In romanizations of the Russian language, Ý is used for Ы́, the letter Ы with a diacritic marking stress.

Other uses
In Vietnamese, Ý means "Italy". The word is a shortened form of Ý Đại Lợi, which comes from Chinese 義大利 (Yìdàlì in Mandarin, a phonetic rendering of the country's name).

Ý does not exist in Modern Spanish, but the letter has survived in the proper name Aýna, a village in Spain, where it is pronounced as. Ý was used in Early Modern Spanish, and it can be observed by some archaic spellings such as the name Ýñigo for Inigo or by the former spelling ýbamos for "íbamos" in older 16th–18th century Spanish writings.