| Part of a series on |
| Dutch grammar |
|---|
| Dutch verbs |
| Dutch nouns |
| Dutch orthography |
| Dutch phonology |
IJ (lowercaseij;Dutch pronunciation:[ɛi]ⓘ; also encountered asUnicode compatibility characters IJ and ij) is adigraph of the lettersi andj. Occurring in theDutch language, it is sometimes considered aligature, or a letter in itself. In most fonts that have a separate character forij, the two composing parts are not connected but are separateglyphs, which are sometimes slightlykerned.
Anij in written Dutch usually represents thediphthong[ɛi], similar to the pronunciation of⟨ay⟩ in "pay",[1] and is preserved in such Dutch spellings as the place-nameIJsselmeer. In standard Dutch and most Dutchdialects, there are two possible spellings for the diphthong[ɛi]:ij andei, with no clear usage rules. To distinguish between the two, theij is referred to as thelange ij ("longij"), theei askorte ei ("shortei") or simplyE – I.[2] In certain Dutch dialects (notablyWest Flemish andZeelandic) and theDutch Low Saxon dialects ofLow German, a difference in the pronunciation ofei andij is maintained. Whether it is pronounced identically toei or not, the pronunciation ofij is often perceived as difficult by people who do not have either sound in their native language.
Theij originally represented a 'long i'.[3] It used to be written asii, as inFinnish andEstonian, but for orthographic purposes, the secondi was eventually elongated, which is a reason why it is calledlange ij. This can still be seen in the pronunciation of some words likebijzonder (bi.zɔn.dər), and the etymology of some words in the Dutch form of several foreign placenames:Berlin andParis are spelledBerlijn andParijs. Nowadays, the pronunciation mostly follows the spelling, and they are pronounced with[ɛi]. Theij is distinct from the lettery. Particularly when writing capitals, Y used to be common instead of IJ in the past. That practice has long been deprecated, since 1804. In scientific disciplines such asmathematics andphysics, the symboly is usually pronouncedij in Dutch.[4]
To distinguish theY fromIJ in common speech, however,Y is often calledGriekse ij (meaning "GreekY"), a literal translation ofi-grec (fromFrench, with the stress ongrec:[iˈɡrɛk]) or alternatively calledYpsilon. In modern Dutch, the letterY occurs only inloanwords,[5] proper nouns, or when deliberately spelled as Early Modern Dutch. The spelling ofAfrikaans (adaughter language of early modern Dutch) has evolved in the exact opposite direction andIJ has been completely replaced byY.
However, the ancient use of Y in Dutch has survived in some personal names, particularly those ofDutch immigrants in theUnited States,Canada,Australia andNew Zealand where as a result ofanglicization, theIJ became aY. For example, the surnameSpijker was often changed intoSpyker andSnijder intoSnyder.
.svg)
 | This sectiondoes notcite anysources. Please helpimprove this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved.(August 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
IJ probably developed out ofii, representing a long[iː] sound (which it still does in some cases, such as in the wordbijzonder and in several Dutch dialects).[3] In theMiddle Ages, thei was written without adot in handwriting, and the combinationıı was often confused withu. Therefore, the secondi was elongated:ıȷ. Later, the dots were added, albeit not inAfrikaans, a language that has its roots in Dutch. In this languagey is used instead.
Alternatively, the letterJ may have developed as aswash form ofi. In other European languages it was first used for the finali inRoman numerals when there was more than onei in a row, such asiij for "three", to prevent the fraudulent addition of an extrai to change the number. In Dutch, which had a nativeii, the "finali in a row elongated" rule was applied as well, leading toij.
Another theory is thatIJ might have arisen from the lowercasey being split into two strokes in handwriting. At some time in the 15th or 16th century, this combination began to be spelled as a ligatureij. An argument against this theory is that even in handwriting which does not join letters,ij is often written as a single sign.
Some time after the birth of this new letter, the sound which was now represented byij, in most cases, began to be pronounced much likeei instead, but words containing it were still spelled the same. Nowadays,ij in most cases represents thediphthong[ɛi], except in the suffix-lijk, where it is usually pronounced as aschwa. In one special case, the Dutch wordbijzonder, the (old) sound[iː] is correct standard pronunciation, although[i] is more common and[ɛi] is also allowed.
Inproper names,ij often appears instead ofi at the end of otherdiphthongs, where it does not affect the pronunciation:aaij,eij,oeij,ooij anduij are pronounced identically toaai[aːi],ei[ɛi],oei[ui],ooi[oːi] andui[œy]. This derives from an old orthographic practice (also seen in older French and German) of writingy instead ofi after another vowel; later, wheny andij came to be seen as interchangeable, the spellings withij came to be used.Spelling reforms and standardization have removed the redundantjs in common words, but proper names continue to use these archaic spellings.
.png)
As the rules of usage for theIJ differ from those that apply to the many other digraphs in the Dutch language—in some situations behaving more as a single ligature or letter than a digraph—theIJ is not only confusing to foreigners, but also a source of discussion among native speakers of Dutch. Its actual usage in theNetherlands and in Flanders (Belgium) sometimes differs from the official recommendations.
Both theDutch Language Union and theGenootschap Onze Taal consider theij to be a digraph of the lettersi andj.[6][4] The descriptive dictionaryVan Dale Groot woordenboek van de Nederlandse taal states thatij is a "letter combination consisting of the signs i and j, used, in some words, to represent the diphthong ɛi."[7] TheWinkler Prins encyclopedia states thatij is the 25th letter of the Dutch alphabet, placed betweenX andY. However, this definition is not generally accepted.[citation needed]
In words wherei andj are in different syllables, theydo not form the digraphij. Incompound words, ahyphen is added, as ingummi-jas.[8]
In the Netherlands,IJ is often used as a ligature:
In Flanders (Belgium),IJ is generally described in schools as a combination of two separate characters.
When a Dutch word starting withIJ iscapitalised, the entire digraph is capitalised, as inIJsselmeer orIJmuiden.[9]
Support for this property in software is limited. Poorlylocalised text editors withautocorrect functionality may incorrectly convert the second of two initial capital letters in a word to lowercase; such improper spelling can thus be found in informal writing. Support on the internet is similarly inconsistent: Web pages styled with theCSS propertytext-transform: capitalize are specified to be handled withUnicode language-specificcase mapping rules (content language being indicated with HTML language attributes, such aslang="nl" for Dutch), but support for language-specific cases is limited toMozilla Firefox (version 14 and above) as of January 2021[update].[10]
Dutch dictionaries since about 1850 invariably sortij as ani followed by aj, i.e. betweenih andik. This is the preferred sorting by theTaalunie.[6] On the other hand, some encyclopedias, like theWinkler Prins, 7th edition, sortij as a single letter positioned betweenx andy.
Telephone directories as well as theYellow Pages in the Netherlands (but not those in Belgium) sortij andy together, as if they were the same, betweenx andz. Thanks to this, surnames likeBruijn andBruyn which sound the same (and even look similar), can be found in the same area. However,Bruin, though it sounds the same as well, is placed with "Brui-" and not with "Bruy-".
When words or (first) names are shortened to their initials, in the Netherlands a word or proper name starting withIJ is abbreviated toIJ. For example,IJsbrand Eises Ypma is shortened toIJ. E. Ypma.[11] The digraph "ei" in "Eises", like other digraphs in Dutch, is shortened to one letter.
In Dutch orthography,ad hoc indication ofstress can be marked by placing anacute accent on the vowel of the stressed syllable. In case of a diphthong or double vowel, both vowels should be marked with an acute accent; this also applies to theIJ (even thoughJ by itself is not a vowel, the digraphIJ represents one distinct vowel sound). However, due to technical limitations the accent on thej is often omitted in electronic documents: "bíjna".[12] Nevertheless, inUnicode it is possible tocombine characters into aj with an acute accent — "bíj́na" — though this might not be supported or rendered correctly by somefonts or systems. Thisj́ is the combination of the regular (soft-dotted)j (U+006A) and the combining acute accent ́ (U+0301). In fonts where the j́ combination is not supported, the tittle on the j may be accompanied by the acute, resulting in ȷ̇́ or similar. This may be avoided by using the dotless ȷ (U+0237) with acute ́ (U+0301), resulting in ȷ́.
Vrijdag can be spelled out in two ways, depending on whether the speller considersij to be one letter or not:
When words are written with large inter-letter spacing,IJ is often, but not always, kept together.F r a n k r ij k orF r a n k r i j k.
When words are written from top to bottom with non-rotated lettersIJ, while not mandatory, keeping them together is largely preferred.[11]
F | or | F |
In Dutch names, interchangeability ofi,ij andy is frequent. Some names are changed unofficially for commercial reasons or by indifference:
The Dutch football team ofFeyenoord changed its name from the original "Feijenoord" to "Feyenoord" after achieving international successes. This was done as a reaction to foreign people often mispronouncing the name. TheFeijenoord district inRotterdam, the namesake of the football club maintains its original spelling.
In the Dutch phoneticradio alphabet, the codewordIJmuiden represents theIJ. This is clearly different from the codewordYpsilon, which is used to represent theY. Dutch and Belgian armed forces use the officialNATO phonetic alphabet, where "Y" is "Yankee" and "IJ" is spelled out "India Juliett".
Incrossword puzzles (except forScrabble – see next paragraph), and in the gameLingo,IJ is considered one letter, filling one square, but theIJ and theY are considered distinct. In other word games, the rules may vary.
The Dutch version of Scrabble has aY with a face value of eight. Some players used it to representIJ orY. The recent Dutch version comes with an example game, which clearly indicates thatY is onlyY, andIJ should be composed ofI andJ. In previous editions of Scrabble there was a single IJ sign.
In word games that make a distinction between vowels and consonants,IJ is considered to be a vowel, if it is considered one letter. WhetherY is a vowel or a consonant, is another matter of discussion, sinceY can represent both a vowel or a (half-) consonant.
In print, the letterÿ (lowercasey withdiaeresis) andij look very different, buthandwriting usually makesÿ,ij andY,IJ look identical. However, sincey occurs only in loanwords, the letterÿ is extremely rare (if not altogether nonexistent) in Dutch.
Thelong ij extends below the baseline and so is written with a long stroke. It is often written as a single sign, even in handwriting that does not join letters.
On some road signs in the Netherlands,IJ appears as a single glyph formed like aU with a break in the left-hand stroke.
Dutch Braille, which is used in the Netherlands, has⟨ij⟩ represented by⠽, which represents⟨y⟩ in other varieties of Braille.⟨y⟩ is written as⠠⠽.[13]
In Belgium,French Braille is used, in which⟨ij⟩ is written simply as⟨i⟩ +⟨j⟩:⠊⠚.
The Dutchij is not present in theASCII code, nor in any of theISO 8859character encodings. Therefore, the digraph is most often encoded as ani followed by aj. The ligature is present as a national-use character within the Dutch version of ISO 646, one implementation of which is of DEC'sNational Replacement Character Set (NRCS)[14] akacode page 1102,[15] and it also existed in theAtari ST character set[16][17][18][19][20][21] (but not in theGEM character set for PCs) as well as in theLotus Multi-Byte Character Set (LMBCS).[22][23] It is also present inUnicode in the Latin Extended-A range asU+0132 IJLATIN CAPITAL LIGATURE IJ (IJ) andU+0133 ijLATIN SMALL LIGATURE IJ (ij).[24][25] These characters are considered compatibility-decomposable.[25] They are included for compatibility and round-trip convertibility with legacy encodings, but their use is discouraged.[26] Therefore, even with Unicode available, it is recommended to encodeij as two separate letters.[11][27] Nonetheless, some fonts use this code point for the ligated form of IJ if it exists.
While Dutch typewriters usually have a separate key for lowercaseij, Belgian typewriters do not.[28] In the Netherlands, aQWERTY computer keyboard layout is common. The standard US layout (often in "International Mode") is widely used, although a specific but rarely used Dutch variant (KBD143) does exist. In Belgium, a specific Belgian variant ofAZERTY keyboard layout (KBD120) is widely used. None of these keyboards feature a key forij orIJ.
If thei and thej belong to different syllables, such as in the mathematical termbijectie (syllablised "bi‧jec‧tie"), words with old spellingminijurk (syllablised "mi‧ni‧jurk"),skijas (syllablised "ski‧jas"), foreign placenames likeBeijing,Dijon,Fiji or person names likeKhadija,Elijah,Marija, they do not form a ligature or a single letter. Earlier statements about sortingij on par withy, keepingij together in thekerning of printed texts, the single square in crossword puzzles, etc., do not apply.
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link).