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
The Greeks adopted a form of this Phoenicianyodh 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.[2]
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 summary
Languages in italics are not usually written using the Latin alphabet
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."[4]
Other languages
In many languages' orthographies, ⟨i⟩ is used to represent the sound /i/ or, more rarely, /ɪ/.
^Brown & Kiddle (1870) The institutes of English grammar, p. 19. Ies is the plural of the English name of the letter; the plural of the letter itself is rendered I's, Is, i's, or is.
^Calvert, J. B. (8 August 1999). "The Latin Alphabet". University of Denver. Archived from the original on Sep 21, 2022.
^"Frequency Table". Cornell University. Archived from the original on Jun 17, 2018. Retrieved 25 January 2015.
^King, David A. (2001). The Ciphers of the Monks. Franz Steiner Verlag. p. 282. ISBN9783515076401. In the course of time, I, V and X became identical with three letters of the alphabet; originally, however, they bore no relation to these letters.
