Talk:J/Archive 1

Error in Spanish pronunciation
Having looked at the SAMPA chart, I think both it and this article are in error about the Spanish pronunciation of "j". The SAMPA chart has it as the same fricative as in Scottish "loch". As far as I know--and I'd like some native speakers to comment--it's the same sound as the English h as in "he".

What I know is Castilian as taught in school, and Nuyorican/Dominican/other mixture as heard on the streets, subways, and television (I think Univision is Mexican._ If, say, this is correct current Argentinian or Ecuadoran pronunciation, we should note that, and that it's not the only (and probably not the commonest) way the language is pronounced. Vicki Rosenzweig 04:52, 13 March 2003 (UTC)
 * In Mexico, the "j" is pronounced the same as the "ch" in the Scottish word "loch", same for Argentina, Chile. In Spain, the sound is even harsher. There is no mistake. But in Caribbean countries it is actually pronounced as an "h". But I don't think that's the most common pronunciation. --201.127.20.28 (talk) 08:26, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

This is a common misconception. The Spanish 'j' is pronounced with a sound not in English, so English-speakers approximate it as 'h'. But it is the same as Scottish 'loch'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.93.191.210 (talk) 15:10, 1 April 2013 (UTC)


 * For what it is worth, 'A Glossary of Later Latin' (Alexander Souter, Oxford University Press) states that "in the semi-vocalic sense, [J] is not used till about AD 800 and then only in S. Italy and Spain". In other words, a distinction between I/i (vowel) and J/j (semi-vowel/semi-consonant, the Latin consonant) was first made around the year 800 - very much earlier than the current version of this article states. --217.44.206.224 12:28, 30 December 2004 (UTC)

Many of the native speakers I have met (almost all from méxico) alternate between /x/ (scottish ch sound)and /h/. From my observation /h/ is used intervocalically (between vowels) and /x/ elsewhere. In some speakers, this /h/ is dropped intervocalically, especially during fast speech. Some speakers seam to only use /x/. Zombiedude347 (talk) 16:39, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Given names
Do more names start with "J" than any other letter? (Or, do a higher percentage of people have names that start with J than any other letter?) It seems that way, but I don't know for certain. Funnyhat 02:21, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

German writing

 * Some people in the german-speaking world still follow the convention of writing (for example) "Isabel" as "Jsabel" and Jnes as "Ines"; one also sometimes encounters J as a capital of I in Italy.

Ok, there are differences in writing styles. E.g. the German "1" looks like an English "7." Their "7" just looks different from the English "7." They don't think it's the same. The sentence above makes it sounds as if people in Germany would actually use a J for a capital I. That is not the case. Their J just looks different from the English and coincidentally the writing of a capital I looks a bit like an English J, so what? The sentence makes it sound like Germans don't know the difference. Did somebody go to Germany for holiday and came back confused enough to write that? --Ben T/C 12:44, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

What happened to Ramus?
I would like to thank Primetime for his recent expansion of the history section, which I found enlightening and interesting and answered some questions... But one question I still have, I see Petrus Ramus of the 1500s is nowhere mentioned in the new version, whereas the older version gave him the credit for making the distinction...  Not knowing too much about the exact details myself (I wasn't even familiar with Ramus' name, before I had read it here) I would like to ask if Primetime or anyone could please explain if Ramus really had anything at all to do with it, or if that was just erroneous information that has now been discarded??? Thanks! ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 02:17, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Codex! I am very glad that you liked it. The letter j was first written as an ornamental i in the 1300s. When the first works were printed in Spanish (around 1450), they used the j to distinguish a sound different from the Spanish i. The entry said before that "Petrus Ramus (d. 1572) was the first to make a distinction between I and J". I wasn't sure whether that meant that he was the first person to notice a difference or write the difference. I couldn't find anything about that in print anywhere, so I left it out. However, to err on the side of caution, I could restore it. --Primetime 02:36, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and added a note about Ramus. I'm unsure, so if I'm wrong someone let me know! --Primetime 02:54, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

j in math
The letter j is also commonly used in mathematics to denote one of the complex third roots of the unit, (i.e.j³=1) it's value is 1/2+(sqrt(3)/2)i with i being the square root of -1. Should'nt this article mention that too? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.206.135.238 (talk • contribs) 17:56, 10 May 2006


 * J=∞) Jsderwin (talk) 23:17, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

cat msu us — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:405:4001:F970:C9EA:9101:7491:7FBB (talk) 18:01, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Ambiguity
In the history section: “Other than English, the Germanic languages use J for the sound [j]. This is true of Hungarian, Albanian, and Finnish, where it can never be a fricative.” Given that many lay people won’t know that these are examples of non-Germanic languages, I’ve changed this to “…also true of…” The section could probably do with being split into two or more sections, and needs wikification. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ahruman (talk • contribs) 14:13, 15 May 2006

Reversion
Someone just removed the history section. However, it is from a publication in the public domain and certainly adds to the article. The following are page scans from A New English Dictionary, volumes 2 and 5, published in 1893 and 1919, respectively. It appears that Oxford University Press copied them straight into it's Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1989).

As you can see, the material I have added is not plagiarized at all. I have even cited it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lagbt (talk • contribs) 16:30, June 8, 2006 -- sockpuppet of User:Primetime..
 * Ahhhh.... that's why that content was removed. I suppose that teaches me to try to jump into the middle of a revert war :(. --SirNuke 06:35, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

pronounciation
A number of Scots pronounce this 'ji' (rhyming with by or sky). Perhaps this could be mentioned. Not all are Scots speakers.

Does anyone know why the letter J (Jay) is sometimes pronounced 'Jye'? The page claims that people in Ireland and Scotland pronounce it 'Jye', but I grew up in Aberdeenshire and have lived in Ireland for years and I have only ever heard people from the Glaswegian area pronounce it this way. Apparently they are taught in school to pronounce it like this. It is my understanding that 'J' is not a letter in Irish or Scots Gaelic, so its origins are not from there. Anderthevulchar 18:15, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Should say now. It's from the French ji, borrowed as jy, which later shifted to jay in English. kwami 19:53, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Dotless J (&#567;)
Are there any languages which use the letter "Dotless J" (&#567;)? --88.76.230.109 15:21, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not aware of any. AFAIK, dotless J is used primarily as a typographic expediency when you need to add a diacritic to dotted J. kwami 19:54, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Also used in old documents before the convention of dotted j and i was established. kwami 20:06, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

first differentiation from J
Originally a final, s.t. initial variant of i, as in roman numerals: viij, etc. As far as different sound values, the OED has this to say:

"The differentiation was made first in Spanish, where, from the very introduction of printing, we see j used for the consonant, and i only for the vowel. For the capitals, I had at first to standfor both (as it still does in German type, and in all varieties of Gothic or Black Letter); but before 1600 a capital J consonant began to appear in Spanish. (See, for example, Minsheu's Spanish Dictionary of 1599, where I and J are strictly distinguished, though the I and J words are put in one series.) In German typography, almost from the first, some printers employed a tailed form of the letter or j initially, to distinguish the consonant sound; but this was by no means generally established till much later. According to Watt (Biblietheca Britannica), Louis Elzevir, who printed at Leyden 1595-1616, is generally credited with making the modern distinction of u and v, i and j, 'which was shortly after followed by the introduction of U and J among the capitals by Lazarus Zetzner of Strasburg in 1619'. In England, individual attempts to differentiate i and j were made already in the 16th c., as by Richard Day, who printed books in London after 1578, and George Bishop, who printed the translation of La Primaudaye's French Academie in 1586, with i, j, u, v, differentiated as in modern use, but had no capital J or U."

This doesn't support the flagged claim in the History section of the article, but the timing is about right. kwami 20:15, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Emoticon?
I keep seeing J used at the end of a sentence in email &c. as if it was an emoticon. What's that all about? After answering here, someone should add it to the article, methinks. 64.242.52.23 (talk) 14:18, 19 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Have a look at http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/05/23/604741.aspx Basically in the webdings font "J" is a codepoint which is used by Outlook to encode a smiley. This appears to violate the HTML standard (using which the emails are encoded) and is displayed by the most common mail clients as "J". E.g. for thunderbird see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31538 Staugsauber (talk) 17:26, 30 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I just to the article. --Waldir talk 14:14, 1 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you for adding this Wingdings info! That was driving me crazy. Psychlohexane (talk) 19:25, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Trissino killed Ramus, sorry :-)
I removed the credits to P. Ramus as the inventor of J as a separate letter... The proposal had actually ben made several decades before by G.G. Trissino, and this is documented beyond any doubt in his Epistola, now publicly available on Internet and which I indicated as my source. If you guys believe it is needed, I may contribute a translation of the brief passage in the Epistola where Trissino suggests using the variants i vs. j as separate letters (and suggests the same about u vs. v, incidentally). Do you think that a mention to Ramus (as an independent re-inventor) should be re-introduced? BTW, there is also a Spanish humanist scholar who made a similar proposal about the same age (sorry: can't recall his name and whether his proposal was about i vs. j, u vs. v, or both). 81.120.65.55 (talk) 15:39, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Support for j with acute accent in Dutch?
Discussion moved to Talk:IJ (digraph).

Internet spamming
Does everyone know what it means to say the "letter J is also commonly used for internet spamming"? Could it be explained more completely? Afrohally (talk) 01:26, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Turkish upper case j has dot.
There are two forms of i letter in Turkish. Dotted (I ı) and dotless (İ i) represent different vocals. Thus upper case of dotted i is İ.

However it's not a problem using upper case j without dot as there is only one form of this letter.

In primary school, J is taught to be with a dot. --194.27.167.167 (talk) 09:05, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Loanwords such as jam
The article is calling jam a loanword. Have we got the right word here? J IM ptalk·cont 05:11, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Good catch. I went back through the article history and found the offending edit; it had originally read "raj" until a now-blocked IP changed it in February 2010. I've restored the previous wording. Princess Lirin (talk) 06:44, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

J in Thai transliteration
Thai alphabetic symbol #8 จ จาน cho chan with initial value ch (IPA [tɕ]) and final value t (IPA [t̚]) historically had been transliterated as J or j, which is yet preserved in modern usage. See, for example, Jessadabodindra, House of Sundarakul na Jolburi and for a triple dose, Abhisit Vejjajiva. Pawyilee (talk) 08:23, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

"The letter J has a natural weakness to the "Jikel" and is easily countered at every turn."
I'm removing the above phrase from the lead paragraph as it is un-cited jibberish. Maybe poorly google translated or something. Search for "jikel" also turns up nothing. RogrMexico (talk) 07:52, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Use In English
In English there are (at least) 4 pronunciations of "J" : 'j' like 'jelly', 'zh' like 'raj', 'y' like 'fjord' and also 'h' like 'jalapeño', and 'jai alai'. The first three are mentioned in the section but not the fourth. Is 'jalapeño' any more foreign than 'fjord' or 'raj'? (If so, what's the english word for that kind of chili?) I was going to add it but I thought it'd be reverted by someone who would say "We mentioned that pronunciation under the next section...or foreign words don't count..." or some other BS. So instead, I brought the topic here so it could gain support. 75.145.77.17 (talk) 18:00, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

J first appeared in English in 1633, not 1634
J first appeared in English in Charles Butler's English Grammar, 1633 (source: British Library).--46.65.8.106 (talk) 20:41, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Wrong. The letter J first appeared in the 1629 Cambridge 1st Revision King James Bible. 73.85.201.21 (talk) 17:30, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Use in non-european languages
Due to the mention of Chinese pinyin, I believe that Japanese Romaji should also be mentioned. Here's how I would word it:
 * In Japanese Hepburn romanization, 'J' is used to represent /d͡ʑ/. However, in Japanese Nihon-shiki romanization the same sound is is written 'zy' or 'dy'. Zombiedude347 (talk) 17:27, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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From /j/ to /d͡ʒ/ in Latin/Romance language
When (what century) the pronunciation of "j" changed from /j/ to /d͡ʒ/,(/ʒ/) in Latin/Romance language ?Propatriamori (talk) 10:04, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

1629 1st Revision Cambridge King James Authorized Version of the Bible introduces the Letter J
The original 1611 King Iames Version did not use the letter J. J first appeared in the 1629 Cambridge King James Authorized Bible which is considered the 1st Revision. Hence, the 26-letter modern English Alphabet was established. 73.85.201.21 (talk) 17:28, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

From the name of the letter i
jy reads "From the name of the letter i (of which j was originally a variant) by affixing the /d͡ʒ/ sound to it)" --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:52, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

J in Italian
Although J is not commonly used in Italian, this letter has existed in the Italian alphabet for centuries, so much so that many surnames use it as their initial. In the past it was considered a graphic variant of I but later became a separate character. Its pronunciation in Italian is /j/, which is the same as the Italian I. An example is my own surname: de Judicibus (/ˈde juditʃibus/). Dejudicibus (talk) 14:27, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Should we delete Dotless j (ȷ) in this article?
I don't feel like it should be there. Should we delete it? Chiagozie Elobuike (talk) 22:46, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Can you come up with any better reason than "I don't feel like it should be there" (aka WP:IDONTLIKEIT). It's a type of J. In the Western European character set, the lower case letter has a dot (diacritic) (aka tittle) but the upper case letter does not. Other character sets vary. If visitors see something outside their conventional experience and broadens their perspective of the world, that is what Wikipedia is about. And maybe they might go on to look at I, to find $⟨ı⟩$, $⟨i⟩$, $⟨í⟩$, $⟨ì⟩$, $⟨ï⟩$, and $⟨î⟩$. The horrors! --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 23:44, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Time period: First recorded use vs recognition
Looking at J and U, J is using the first recognized date, while U is using the first used date (1386), with the first recognized date being as late as 1762 (French Academy). Both letters have a similar history in that they're initially an alternate styling of the existing i/v, respectively, which eventually got used to represent a distinct sound.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/J-letter says: "The process of differentiation began about the 14th century but was not complete until the 17th century". So maybe "Time period" should be updated to "ca. 1300-today"?

--Dänenleo (talk) 10:29, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Why are manicules listed as sisters of J?
The article lists ☜ and ☛ as sisters of J. That makes no sense. Must be vandalism or something. Manicules have nothing to do with letters and have no phonetic value. They should be removed. The Old Macintosh (talk) 13:03, 13 June 2023 (UTC)


 * ✅ I made no attempt to track down the source of this edit, or if it replaced two valid entries. –LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄ ) 08:06, 15 June 2023 (UTC)