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The lowercase "i" redirects here. This article is about a letter. For other uses, see I (disambiguation).
''Due to MediaWiki's uppercase algorithm, ı, the lowercase dotless i, redirects here.

The letter I is the ninth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its English name is pronounced .

History


Egyptian hieroglyph Proto-Semitic Y Phoenician Y Etruscan I Greek Iota
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In Semitic, the letter Yôdh was probably originally a pictogram for an arm with hand, derived from a similar hieroglyph that had the value of in Egyptian, but was reassigned to /j/ (pronounced as English Y in "yoke") by Semites, because their word for "arm" began with that sound. This letter could also be used for the vowel sound /i/, mainly in foreign words.

The Greeks adopted a form of this Phoenician yodh as their letter iota (Ι, ι). It stood for the vowel /i/, the same as in the Old Italic alphabet. In Latin (as in Modern Greek), it was also used for the consonant sound of /j/. The modern letter J was originally a variation of this letter, and both were interchangeably used for both the vowel and the consonant, only coming to be differentiated in the 16th century.

In modern English, I represents different sounds, mainly a "long" diphthong /ai/, that developed from /i:/ during the Great vowel shift of the 15th century, as well as the "short", open /I/ as in "bill". The dot over the lowercase 'i' is sometimes called a tittle. In the Turkish alphabet, dotted and dotless I are considered separate letters and both have uppercase (I, İ) and lowercase (ı, i) forms.

Codes for computing


In Unicode the capital I is codepoint U+0049 and the lowercase i is U+0069.

The ASCII code for capital I is 73 and for lowercase i is 105; or in binary 01001001 and 01101001, correspondingly.

The EBCDIC code for capital I is 201 and for lowercase i is 137.

The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "I" and "i" for upper and lower case respectively.

Meanings for I


Use in Germany

In Germany, Roman numerals are often used for numbering. When listing things by capital letters of the alphabet, they avoid using the letter I, skipping over to J, to avoid confusion with the alternative Roman numberal numbering system. For example, in every regiment in the German Army there is what would be expressed in English as a "J company" but no "I company."

See also


Ì, Í, Î, Ï, Ĭ, İ, Turkish dotted and dotless I

Latin letters | Vowel letters

I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I (letter) | I | I | I | I | I | I | I (латиница) | I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I | I

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "I".

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