Talk:IJ (digraph)

Y or IJ

 * It is referred to as the 'long Y' in the Dutch language, and contrasts with the 'short Y' ei, which in most dialects is pronounced identically. The letter Y only occurs in loanwords…

That statement is misleading or at least confusing; there is no reason to replace IJ by Y here. &mdash;Herbee 13:24, 2004 Mar 18 (UTC)


 * More clear now I hope. &mdash; Jor (Darkelf) 13:56, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

That was quick, Darkelf. Is there any particular reason why the article's title should be 'Dutch Y' and not 'Dutch IJ'? Would you mind if I move it? &mdash;Herbee 21:15, 2004 Mar 18 (UTC)


 * When I needed a title for this article I chose 'Dutch Y', because in Dutch it is just called the "IJ", and replaces the Y as a letter of the alphabet. Other possible titles are 'IJ ligature', and of course 'Dutch IJ'. No objection to moving it (keeping a redirect from 'Dutch Y'). &mdash; Jor (Darkelf) 21:45, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

vrolijk
As far as I know (and I'm a native speaker), the ĳ in vrolĳk is always pronounced as a schwa, and never as ii. The ĳ in the word bĳzonder is pronounced as ii, but it is also the only case I know of. So probably this needs to be refined, or another example of &#307 being pronounced as ii in standard Dutch has to be found (except of course for words als bijzonderheid).--Berteun 12:50, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC) It is indeed tha same as 'bijzonder' 13:21, 6 January 2009 (UTC)Cornelis (native dutch) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.242.97.51 (talk)


 * Well, the ij in vrolijk sounds like schwa, however in sound it's more close to i (as in knights who say ni) than to ei. If you listen to sound records from before the 60's, then you'll sometimes hear people say vrolik and also in older writings you can find it written as vrolik, like you can find schrikte. (my apologees, only Dutch and people who studied Dutch might understand this and then perhaps even those wouldn't if they haven't seen older literature). Also in Flemish you'll still hear vrolik... however it it not pronounced as vroliek (vroliik), of course. Frenzie 17:34, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

digraph rendering
The article opens with "Ĳ (also IJ)", but on my system, with the default font the two are rendered identically, as though it said, "IJ (also IJ)", which looks pretty silly. Just letting you know. --Furrykef 00:25, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Template:Wrongtitle's title
What is the difference (besides the dis-ambiguation suffix) between the article's title and what the message claims to be the correct title?? Georgia guy 20:05, 7 May 2005 (UTC)


 * IJ are two letters, I+J. ĳ is a single letter. Try selecting them. Jordi·✆ 20:09, 7 May 2005 (UTC)


 * More specifically: ij are two Unicode characters, i+j. ĳ is a single Unicode characters. That's a technical matter.
 * Wether ij (or ĳ or handwritten) constitutes 1 or 2 letters, is a matter of some debate. I would like to see more of that debate than just a reference to the Winkler Prins in the first paragraph, arguing in 1 direction (that IJ is considered by most native speakers to be 1 letter). Van Dale argues notably in the other direction.
 * The same POV bias is repeated in the section Sorting:
 * No matter how it is sorted, or if the ligature or i+j is used, in Dutch it remains one letter (...) This rule is however not always followed: some Flemings do not consider IJ to be a letter, and consequently IJ is not consistently capitalized, resulting in spellings like Ijsvrij. This is however not standard usage, and incorrect in standard Dutch.
 * I agree that the capitalisation Ij is not standard usage, and wrong, but that does not necessarily imply that ij is most definetely one letter, and not considering it to be one letter is wrong.
 * – Adhemar 21:03, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

The title can be considered POV, since not everybody considers the digraph a letter, not even among Dutch speakers. IJ (alledged letter) would be kind of stupid. But should we rename (move) to IJ (ligature), or better yet, IJ (digraph)? – Adhemar 08:57, 12 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't see any objections, so I moved to IJ (digraph) – Adhemar 18:44, 8 October 2006 (UTC)


 * IJ was a ligature like w and ß was. That just origin. Now it is a letter. This 'IJ (digraph)' is stupid only Belgians believe in. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.93.232.101 (talk) 16:31, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

About the letter IJ: Some, especially Flemish people, deny the existence of the letter ij. But every Dutch child learns about this letter (see the word 'gijs' on the Dutch 'leesplankje'), so it is silly not to talk about the letter ij. On the Dutch wikipedia, there is an annoying thing going on, people trying to push their personal conviction as fact. The latest succes of the opponents is to rename the entry from ij (letter) to ij (digraph), as if you can make something disappear if you refuse to mention it. The fact is, this is an article about a letter, about how people write, not about typesetters and how they handle things like 'fl' and 'fi'. If you want to talk about pink elephants, you have to call it pink elephants, even if there are some people who are convinced that pink elephants should be eliminated. So change the title back to ij (letter). Its status is comparable to letters like ß, å and ø, even though they, indeed like the letter w, have an origin in the combination of two letters, and are not used in all applicable writing systems. For instance, the ß is not used in Swiss German. Likewise, ij is not fully recognised as a letter in Flanders, but nevertheless, to millions of people it does exist. 82.93.232.101 11:23, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Get rid of the digraph?
I propose that we simply not use the digraph character and just use the letters I and J to spell IJ. The two are going to be rendered identically in most fonts anyway, which ties into the "wrongtitle" thing above, mainly, it may well not make any sense until you look at the wiki code or until you try to select one of the two characters only to find it's one character. Of course we could still note that there's a Unicode codepoint for it. - furrykef (Talk at me) 12:26, 16 May 2005 (UTC)


 * You hit the nail right on the head, Furrykef. Someone who considers ĳ one letter, will use i and j over his dead body. This is exactly what the discussion is about.Marc1966 (talk) 23:11, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Origins of IJ
In medieval times, before the letter j emerged as a distinct letter, a series of letters i in Roman numerals was commonly ended with a flourish; hence they actually looked like ij, iij, iiij, etc. This proved useful in preventing fraud, as it was impossible, for example, to add another i to vij to get viij. This practice is now merely an antiquarian's note; it is never used. (It did, however, lead to the Dutch diphthong IJ.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ruud Koot (talk • contribs) 21:30, 26 May 2005 (UTC)


 * "ij" and "iij" is still written in liturgical books to mark repetition (twice or thrice) - such as "Kyrie eleison iij." 89.176.17.112 (talk) 01:10, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

IJ and Unicode
The IJ ligature in Unicode is only intended to be compatible with legacy processing systems. Since Wikipedia isn't a legacy processing system, the IJ ligature should not be used in the wikipedia article.

From Unicode 4.0 standard, page 71-72:

• Compatibility decomposable characters are a subset of compatibility characters included in the Unicode Standard to represent distinctions in other base standards. They support transmission and processing of legacy data. Their use is discouraged other than for legacy data or other special circumstances.

• Replacing a compatibility decomposable character by its compatibility decomposition may lose round-trip convertibility with a base standard. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.132.163.208 (talk) 00:33, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

The title of this article should probably be changed back to IJ. Or does this cause problems like the previous wrongtitle? What do you think? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.132.163.208 (talk) 00:52, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Handwriting
It says: in the handwriting of most Dutch speakers ÿ and ij are identical. I don't think that is correct. Look at these typical examples: http://www.let.rug.nl/~kleiweg/ij.html The first word bijou has two letters i and j. The second word ijs has one letter ij, and the word yoghurt has one letter y. -- 213.84.55.218 23:02, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
 * My ij and y are clearly different (as on the example you linked to), only the ij is so into my system that I often write the y as ij and can only just keep myself from adding the dots. But that is a mistake and rather the opposite of what the i-grec is. Frenzie 17:34, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Agree. The example of the Garamond italics variants shown on the page gets the point across quite well - there is a subtle difference between y with diaresis and ij which is reflected beautifully by Garamond here. There is a difference in "feel" which I suspect is universal among Dutch natves, nothwithstanding the apparent examples to the contrary of roadside graffiti. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.205.183.4 (talk) 10:55, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

long IJ vs Short IJ
If it is noted that the name is ij lange (long ij) to distinguish it from short ij, I think that the transcription shall be with long sign as [] not only [].

Please answer to me also at my catalan user talk. THANKS —Ludor 15:12, 22 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Short answer: the names are based on the letter form, not the underlying sound (which is identical in most cases). Longer answer at your talk. Jordi·✆ 16:07, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, can someone please remove the term short 'ij', there is really no such thing, as every Dutch grammar teacher will teach you. There is the letter/digraph 'ij' and the digraph 'ei'. Talking about 'korte' and 'lange ij' is by some considered almost as dumb as not knowing the difference between 'kennen' and 'kunnen', therefore there shouldn't be a mention of it in a encyclopedia IMHO Remko2 21:12, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

In Alsatian?
Is the Dutch letter ij related to the 18th-century Alsatian German letter ÿ?

Did this letter exist in the dialect of German spoken in Alsace in the 1700's?

Some of my ancestors came from Alsace, and I did a lot of genealogical research. I can verify that the following spellings are quite clear in both printing and handwriting in the church record books in the late 1700's and very early 1800's:


 * Xaverÿ ( = High German “Xaver”, English “Xavier”)
 * Himerÿ ( = French “Himère”, High German “Immer” or “Imer”, Latin “Himerius”)
 * Antonÿ ( = High German “Anton", English “Anthony”, Latin “Antonius”)
 * Kirÿ (a surname)

The record-keepers occasionally forgot the umlaut and just wrote y instead of ÿ, but they never wrote it as ij.

To add to my confusion, one of the Alsatian record-keepers spelled the number zwei as zwiÿ on one occasion!

The Alsatian language article is just a stub and not very helpful. Lawrence King 07:23, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, Alsatian is an Alemannic dialect and in Alemannic the letter y (which developed from ÿ) stands for /i/ (ee). On the Alemannic wikipedia we recently found out that the y we use actually came from ij. The y is mostly used in Switzerland nowadays, I think most Alsatian writers use ii instead. That zwei is spelled zwiÿ is because iÿ once stood for ei. Hope that helps!--Chlämens 15:05, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

European rules for the use of the IJ in public records
The URL European rules for the use of the IJ in public records is not working; is there a good replacement? -- Psiphiorg 06:43, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Capital Y-umlaut?
The article says "In print (lowercase y with diaeresis) and ij look very different, but in the handwriting of most Dutch speakers ÿ and ij are identical. Fortunately, since the y occurs only in loanwords, the ÿ is extremely rare (if not altogether non-existent) in Dutch." My question is, where, if anywhere does y-umlaut occur, and can it be capitalized? These characters were in the Mac character set from day 1, and when I was working on handwriting recognitin I tried to figure out why; we went ahead and implemented them in the Newton OS 2.0 even though they didn't seem to be good for much. But in 1996 when I happened to visit the Old Church in Amsterdam, I saw what appeared to be a capital Y-umlaut, not IJ, carved in a floor grave stone. What's up with that? Does any language use such characters? Did old Dutch? Dicklyon 00:34, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The ÿ is not used in Dutch, the letter you saw might just have been a random geometric shape. The few uses does have in other languages are described at ÿ. I don't trust the claim that it is used in Welsh, though. This might just be a mix up with ý. —Ruud 01:16, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


 * It wasn't a random shape; it was part of name -- too bad I don't have a photo. Anybody near the old church?


 * Centuries ago, or even decades ago, people were less pedantic about such things. It's quite possible that the author considered Ÿ and IJ to be the same, simply because in handwriting the difference is often not even noticeable. In recent Dutch texts, this mistake is rarely made. Also, in Afrikaans, a language related to Dutch, originating from the time when the Dutch colonised South-Africa, uses Ÿ where Dutch uses IJ. One could deduce that the difference between Ÿ and IJ was not considered important by those who brought Dutch to South-Africa. – Adhemar


 * This last comment is not correct. y/Y is used in Afrikaans where Dutch uses ij, not ÿ/Ÿ. It's correct in the article, though – Adhemar


 * P.S. "not used in Dutch" excludes the use of ÿ to replace ĳ by a few DOS programs. Stange that even ASCII includes this character. —Ruud 01:20, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The Mac character set was an extension of ASCII. Why they included y-umlaut I'll never know. Dicklyon 02:23, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


 * ÿ is exceptionally used in French. Examples that come to mind are the composer Eugène Ysaÿe, and the locality L'Haÿ-les-Roses near Paris. More importantly, ÿ/Ÿ is used extensively in Afrikaans (where Dutch uses ij). – Adhemar 09:02, 12 August 2006 (UTC)


 * As you said yourself (see above): in Afrikaans y/Y is used, NOT ÿ/Ÿ. Richard 14:58, 29 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Just to be pedantic... Y umlaut never occurs. You mean Y with diaeresis. -- Jordi· ✆ 12:33, 16 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Oh, ÿ of little faith... :-) --Psiphiorg 18:06, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

bijectie
I think ij is a ligature and not a letter, because wether I write bijectie or ijs my ij stays the same and I allways write it as a ligature, never as two distinct letter. If ij be a ligature, shouldn't the ij in bijectie be a ligature? Because otherwise the word bijectie should look like "bi jectie" in writing?
 * I learned it as bi-jectie, never seen anyone write bijectie 85.145.103.163 14:45, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Technically, there is no ij in bijectie (with or without a hyphen) since the i is in the first sillable and the j is in the second. Richard 14:55, 29 August 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Richardw nl (talk • contribs)

correct IPA rendering?
Is [ɛɪ] the right sound? I haven't heard Dutch spoken much, but I was sure I heard something more like [ʌ:ɪ], so that ijs sounded pretty much like the usual American pronunciation of "ice." Not R (talk) 17:32, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
 * According to our article on Dutch phonology it should be . This is also in accordance with G. E. Booij (1995), The Phonology of Dutch, Oxford University Press, p. 4. --Lambiam 20:40, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * [ɛɪ] is the right sound. But it is as hard for some native speakers as it is for many foreigners. So you may very well have heard sth. like [ʌ:ɪ]. We had a boy in school that moved over from the Amsterdam area, that we made say 'ei' (egg), and we laughed our hearts out. Sorry now, of course. Marc1966 (talk) 23:05, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Kerning
The intro states: "in most fonts the two composing characters are not connected, but sometimes slightly kerned together." My impression from looking at some older (pre digital typesetting) Dutch books is that the width of "ij" (almost) equals the width of "u". This appears to hold across different fonts. In several digital fonts (e.g. Palatino, Bookman Old Style, Cambria, Arial), however, "u" is markedly (up to 25%) wider than "i" + "j", so any adjustment of the spacing should actually move them slightly apart. Does anyone know of digital fonts that have a single character for "ij" or that apply kerning to "i"+"j", and how the width of "ij" then relates to the sum of the widths of "i" and "j" and to the width of "u"? --Lambiam 13:22, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Writing IJ as Y making a come-back?
In the last couple of years I've noticed that many people I know often write Y instead of IJ when typing in instant messengers or using SMS language. One of the reasons might be that you save a character (which are limited in SMS messages) each time you use Y instead of IJ, and since it is a common letter you save quite a lot of characters this way. For example "Ga jy vrydag mee eten?" Of course these people still write "IJ" in more formal texts --Lamadude (talk) 00:07, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't fully see the point. English SMS knows many short cut (C U; LOL etc.) Arnoutf (talk) 21:51, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Perhaps they are becoming Afrikaans; vrydag and jy are acceptable (indeed only) Afrikaans spellings. ;-) Booshank (talk) 00:15, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Support for j with acute accent in Dutch?
In Dutch, the letter j (only lower case) sometimes carries an acute accent: this is the case when the ij digraph gets stress in the sentence. As an example, here is the Dutch translation of the blaming English sentence "You [of all people] did that!": "Jíj hebt dat gedaan!" Here, both the i and the j in "Jij" should get an acute accent -- but as far as I have seen up to now, there exists no proper support for this letter. It would be greatly helpful if someone could add some instructions how to get it done. Qaz 94.208.2.11 (talk) 18:08, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Well... some people see "ij" as a single letter. If you do, and you want to add additional stress on it, both dots should be replaced by a single acute accent. If "ij" is viewed as a digraph from "i" and "j" (which is the "official" point of view) there should not be an acute accent on the "j" since that's a consonant and therefore can't be stressed. So, íj is the correct way. Richard 07:36, 11 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Reply moved from Talk:J
 * Sorry to inform you, but: you're wrong... Call it a digraph, call it anything you want, the fact of the matter is that i and j together behave differently from i and j alone. E.g.: when a sentence (or a name, like "IJsbrand") starts with "ij", both letters should be capitalized. Thus, "j" is not a consonant here, but is part of a "new" letter, and as a consequence, when it is stressed, both dots become acute accents. That is just the way it is. I didn't ask to explain what is right; I know what is right. I asked how it can be made, font-wise. Qaz. 94.208.2.11 (talk) 19:38, 11 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Do you have a source for that, Richard? I got curious and found this source supporting two accent marks. Oliphaunt (talk) 10:52, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * And here the official taalunie advice supporting the double accent. Note however that both acknowledge that it is usually omitted due to technical restrictions. Oliphaunt (talk) 11:03, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * (fixed indentation)
 * ...which is exactly why I asked the question: I learned to write the accents in school, and even on a typewriter they posed no problem; but in the computer age, they just seem to lack any support at all - probably exactly because just a few people too many won't recognize the "j" as (part of) a vowel... Qaz. 94.208.2.11 (talk) 19:51, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * B.t.w.: to illustrate how, in dutch, when stressed, both parts of a digraph vowel get the acute accent, here are some examples of other stressed vowel combinations (or rather: combination vowels): h&iacute;&eacute;r (here!) d&aacute;&aacute;r (there!) "Ga d&oacute;&oacute;r!" (Go on!). Er&uacute;&iacute;t! (Get out!)
 * Qaz.94.208.2.11 (talk) 20:00, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Those could've been quotes from some Dutch amateur adult movie... Oliphaunt (talk) 21:26, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, I think I should explain why I mentioned that I only need an accent for the lower case letter. This is because, in dutch, all accents disappear when capitalized. There may be some exceptions to this. Without verification: I could imagine that in a sentence beginning with a pure german word like "&uuml;berhaupt" the &uuml; would change to &Uuml; for clarity's sake, but this would still just be an exception to a clear rule: no accents when capitalized.
 * Qaz. 94.208.2.11 (talk) 21:20, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * There is some difference of opinion about that between the 'white' and 'green' spellings. Read up on it at the taalunie / onzetaal sites.  Anyway, that doesn't really pertain to this discussion.  You raise an interesting point about the accented 'j'. Oliphaunt (talk) 21:26, 11 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Oliphaunt, the example you cite from the TaalUnie is a bit strange: they mention de j van een lange ij. If the "lange ij" would be a (single) letter there would be no "j" in it... I see your point however, both sources agree that there should/could be two accents, but that it's acceptable when only one is used. I still think that it depends a bit on whether you see "ij" as one vowel or as two letters, but I stand corrected - when possible two ought to be used.
 * The examples 94.208.2.11 gave are not entirely correct. The "ü" can be two things: a (German) u-umlaut or a "u" with trema. The first is not considered a letter with an accent and as such can be capitalized, for instance at the beginning of a sentence. A trematized "u" can never occur at the beginning of a sentence so capitalizing is more rare.
 * Richard 08:54, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you for pointing that out. I would even (more generally) say that a trematized vowel never occurs at the beginning of a word, because the function of a trema is not to alter the sound value of a letter (like an umlaut does), but to visually separate two vowels that might be misread for a digraph (so there is always a vowel in front of a letter that carries a trema), so wordstart capitalisation of tremas is totally nonexistent... But there is also the case where a whole word or a whole sentence gets capitalized letter by letter. Qaz 94.208.2.11 (talk) 22:27, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * However, if the need arises even letters with an accent are capitalized and the accent need not be lost in the process. That many people do lose the accents is (in my opinion) flawed. Richard 08:54, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * By my knowledge, in the times of hand- and typewriting and printing press with lead letters, before the personal computer was invented, we were not taught to write a capital with an accent in Dutch. "een" (english:"a") becomes "Een", and "&eacute;&eacute;n" ("one") becomes "E&eacute;n, when capitalized -- both in hand- and in typewriting. And when you capitalize the whole word, you get: "EEN" en "EEN". "Het is van tweeën één" ("There are only two options.") becomes "HET IS VAN TWEEEN EEN". Except maybe the afore mentioned exception of vowels with a "real" umlaut, because they are not seen as Dutch words. Qaz 94.208.2.11 (talk) 22:27, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, I do agree that when long vowels are stressed both letters have an accent (vóór, dáár) but have noticed that diphthongs are often written with just one accent (jóuw, erúit). That might be a personal choice of the writer. Richard 08:54, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, actually they really don't look too bad to me. I feel I might be mistaken about these letter combinations, the rules may have changed, or there may be room for personal choice as a consequence of conflicting guidelines... Who is eager enough to look it up? Qaz 94.208.2.11 (talk) 22:27, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Back to the question at hand: how to place an acute accent over "j". I think the only way you can make that happen is by coding the accent separately ( ́ ) and placing it over "j" (just like you would do on an old-fasioned typewriter). It would result in something like íj́ or ı́j́ - maybe it would look better if I had a tittle-less j. Richard 08:54, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * When they are very small, they don't look too bad, but when you zoom in you will see that the dot on the j spoils all the fun -- that is not the desired effect. There exists a tittle-less, it is &amp;#567; &#567; You can find it on the discussion page for "J". Qaz 94.208.2.11 (talk) 23:01, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * edit conflict – imagine that!
 * It should technically be possible to use the combining character U+0301 for the accent after the j. Lots of software probably doesn't support this yet. Oliphaunt (talk) 09:00, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * By the way, it's not so hard to get the desired effect in LaTeX: [[Image:accented-ij.png]] Oliphaunt (talk) 09:41, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * (Great example. :-) -DePiep (talk) 22:32, 13 May 2009 (UTC). Please go on)
 * That looks very convincing to me. If only it were HTML! Qaz 94.208.2.11 (talk) 23:01, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hej Qaz, one more thing on the tittle-less "j" - I didn't say it doesn't exist, I said I don't have it. I see only a small square indicating this character can't be displayed properly. I would have written "HET IS VAN TWEEEN EEN" differently: "HET IS VAN TWEEËN ÉÉN" but that might be personal. At the beginning of a sentence ("Eén hoofdletter") I do tend to omit the accent on the first "E" though. One last thing: you tend to type "&amp;eacute;" (and maybe "&amp;Eacute;") - why don't you use "é" itself? Using something called "international keyboard lay-out" it's very easy and if you don't want to use that, below the edit-box are a lot of diacritical combinations and other characters that can be included using a simple click (just above the remark "Once you click the Save button"). By including "é" directly the source text remains easier to read. Richard 06:49, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * There is a difference between accents used as "nadruktekens" (stress marks) and as "uitspraaktekens" (pronounciation marks). Again there is a difference of opinion between "green" and "white" spellings.  The green spelling forbids any accents on capitals unless the loanwords themselves require it; the white spelling allows all accents on capitals with the sole exception of "uitspraaktekens".  So according to white spelling it would be: "Eén van u heeft de brievenbus dichtgetimmerd. (...) Ú was het!". Oliphaunt (talk) 08:33, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * But of course this is becoming off-topic now for this talk page. I think the matter of the accented ij is settled, isn't it? Oliphaunt (talk) 08:36, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * In Unicode it is possible to combine characters into a j with an acute accent – "bí&#x237;&#x301;na" – though this might not be supported or rendered correctly by some fonts or systems. This &#x237;&#x301; is the result of the combination of the dotless j and the combining acute accent: &#x237; (U+0237) and &#160;&#x301; (U+0301). I've added this to the article. thayts  💬  12:29, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Is ALT-152 the same as Dutch 'ij'?
I am putting this here because I have been informed on nl wiki that ALT-152 may not be Dutch 'ij' but greek y with trema. Because they look the same they might be interchangable, but I am not sure. 195.35.160.133 (talk) 10:29, 15 June 2010 (UTC) Martin.

Note that in this image, from the Article Code page 437, it looks the same as a Dutch 'ij':



195.35.160.133 (talk) 10:48, 15 June 2010 (UTC) Martin.

OLD TEXT, MOVED FROM ARTICLE TO DISCUSSION:

The lower case Dutch ij is present in code pages 437 and 850, in both cases at position 152. This implies that the character can be typed by typing the alt code ALT-1-5-2 on the numeric keypad.


 * As far as I know it is indeed a greek y with trema, and a greek y whatsoever is not exactly the same as 'ij'. Thus, it should not be used as 'ij'. You can read in discussions above that ÿ is actually used in other languages (though not much) like French, but in Dutch y umlauts never occur. Styath (talk) 23:29, 26 June 2010 (UTC)


 * By the way, although the ÿ (<--produced with ALT-1-5-2) in that image looks very much like some handwritten 'ij', this is still font dependent and it's certainly not meant to be the same as the Dutch 'ij'. So the answer to your question is: no. Originally the 'ij' developed out of two disjointed strokes (ıı) as you can read in the article's history section, but in handwriting it is often contracted. I can't imagine that they created a symbol for this contraction. However, there is an unicode encoding of 'ij': ĳ (U+0133). Styath (talk) 23:46, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your reply Styath. (I added a resolved tag this section.) 195.35.160.133 (talk) 15:51, 6 July 2010 (UTC) Martin.
 * This letter (ÿ) is indeed normally not used in Dutch, but there is at least one exception to that rule: it is used in the Belgian family name Croÿ.
 * Qaz Janssen (talk) 10:33, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Well... names don't always follow the rules of a language. Blaauw as a name is correct, but the color is spelled with only one 'a'. This is not exclusive for Dutch - e.g. in Switzerland the 'ß' is not used - except in some names. One could argue that names in general are excempted from the rules. Richard 07:09, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

IJ as single letter in schools in the Netherlands — until when?
The text currently states:
 * In Dutch primary schools, ij used to be taught as being the 25th of the alphabet.

I didn't know that it isn't taught as such any more. Can we get a date for when this changed? My primary education was between 1977 and 1983, and it was taught as a single letter to me. – gpvos (talk) 14:51, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


 * My primary education, and specifically when I learned letters, was around 1988 and it wasn't taught as a single letter. It was taught as a combination, much like ei, ie, oe and ch. --Zom-B (talk) 07:51, 4 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Maybe it also depends regionally. I was grown up in the west of The Netherlands, while those banners look like they originate from the east (like the one stating Twente) --Zom-B (talk) 07:57, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
 * It was taught to me as being a single letter as well - in the west of the Netherlands, first half of the 1970's. Richard 09:55, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

The Winkler Prins encyclopedia states that ij is the 25th letter of the Dutch alphabet, placed between X and Y.
Should this not be placed between X and Z? Otherwise the Dutch alphabet ens up with having 27 characters. 94.208.32.31 (talk) 20:57, 25 November 2010 (UTC)


 * It has 27 letters (although we do not teach that in school). The Y is used in many loan words like Yoghurt so cannot be disregarded. (By the way computer sorting programs do not only fail to keep both letters capitalised but also insist on ranking IJ starting names in the I range; this all under the header if a stupid algorithm is not capable to include a centuries old culutral thing, we change culture rather then telling some idiot programeers they fucked up big time). Arnoutf (talk) 21:53, 25 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I think Arnoutf's comment about "telling some idiot programeers they fucked up big time" is a bit extreme, though the user makes a salient point: efforts to internationalize language and alphabetization practices seem to be made at the expense of throwing cultural traditions under the bus. This appears to be a similar phenomenon to that of no longer alphabetizing Spanish ch as a separate letter, even though it represents a sound that is different from both Spanish c ([k] or [s], much as in English) and h (silent, except in a few words in some dialects). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.246.205.134 (talk • contribs) 16 jan 2013 20:42‎ (UTC)

Image leesplankje
In the article, there are two images of the same "leesplankje" (readboard), but with the underlying text claiming two different things. The first one correctly states that all letters resembling one sound are grouped, like ij, but also oe and ch. The second one uses a different image of the same object as an argument that ij is one letter, since it is grouped together. This could be very confusing for anyone who doesn't know Dutch language. --Harmenator (talk) 21:20, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
 * In the first image, i and j are grouped, whereas in the second image they are physically joined. Richard 08:20, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Ij as repetition
I have seen the digraph ij in many early music facsimiles and old notation scores, and have always been under the impression that it stood for repetition of the preceding word(s). Does anyone know more about this and would like to expand the article? --Chrysalifourfour (talk) 12:07, 4 December 2012 (UTC)


 * This isn't a diagraph, but instead is just ij or iij. It's either a variant version of the Roman numeral for 2 or 3, depending upon how many times the phrase in repeated, or an abbreviation for idem. See: —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 13:47, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Winkler Prins
Does someone have access to a copy the Winkler Prins or its website? Does its article on IJ literally state that it "is the 25th letter of the Dutch alphabet, placed between X and Y", or was this claim merely inferred from the fact that WP sorts the IJ between X and Y? —Ruud 22:21, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I have here a 6th edition of the Winkler Prins (1954). IJ in there is not sorted between X and Y. Y and IJ are just sorted mixed as being one letter (25th). There is not a separate article on the IJ, only an article on Y which also deals with IJ. It states something like this: "The location of the y in the Dutch alphabet is sometimes also assigned to the ij". Possibly this is different in newer editions. HTH --Ajv39 (talk) 10:14, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Use in German?
In ZDF documentary Die Deutschen I saw a panoramic painting for Thomas Müntzer's rebellion, which appears the word "Frijheit", who can explain this? -- Great Brightstar (talk) 20:41, 24 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Bundschuh-frijheit-1493.jpg Is this the image you're referring to? —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 14:12, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I think so. -- Great Brightstar (talk) 13:19, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Given the overlap between the area involved in German Peasants' War and Alemanic German, it's likely this is related to the earlier discussion on this page about ij/ÿ in Alsatian. There's a section on ij in the als:Y article, but I can't read it with enough confidence to say that something should be added to this article (and there's no sourcing on it over there either). —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 18:54, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Further investigation finds some info in the de:Y article stating that in Early New High German and Middle Dutch, the long sound was sometimes rendered as ij as a variant of ii and that ij sometimes that became an ÿ. That is confirmed in the source Grammatisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 20:07, 27 March 2024 (UTC)