thumb|IJ digraph

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< Unicode IJ (U+0132) / ij (U+0133). Though those characters obviously exist, their >

< use is officially discouraged. They are mentioned in the sections "encoding" >

< and "keyboards", which should remain the only places for them to be used. >

< Richardw NL / 2007-10-15T0717 >

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IJ (minuscule: ij); ; also encountered as Unicode compatibility characters IJ and ij) is a digraph of the letters i and j. Occurring in the Dutch language, it is sometimes considered a ligature, or a letter in itself. In most fonts that have a separate character for ij, the two composing parts are not connected but are separate glyphs, which are sometimes slightly kerned.

An ij in written Dutch usually represents the diphthong , similar to the pronunciation of in "pay", and is preserved in such Dutch spellings as the place-name IJsselmeer. In standard Dutch and most Dutch dialects, there are two possible spellings for the diphthong : ij and ei, with no clear usage rules. To distinguish between the two, the ij is referred to as the ("long ij"), the ei as ("short ei") or simply E – I. In certain Dutch dialects (notably West Flemish and Zeelandic) and the Dutch Low Saxon dialects of Low German, a difference in the pronunciation of ei and ij is maintained. Whether it is pronounced identically to ei or not, the pronunciation of ij is often perceived as difficult by people who do not have either sound in their native language.

The ij originally represented a 'long i'. It used to be written as ii, as in Finnish and Estonian, but for orthographic purposes, the second i was eventually elongated, which is a reason why it is called . This can still be seen in the pronunciation of some words like //, and the etymology of some words in the Dutch form of several foreign placenames: Berlin and Paris are spelled and . Nowadays, the pronunciation mostly follows the spelling, and they are pronounced with . The ij is distinct from the letter y. 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 as mathematics and physics, the symbol y is usually pronounced ij in Dutch.

To distinguish the Y from IJ in common speech, however, Y is often called (meaning "Greek Y"), a literal translation of ' (from French, with the stress on grec: ) or alternatively called Ypsilon. In modern Dutch, the letter Y occurs only in loanwords, proper nouns, or when deliberately spelled as Early Modern Dutch. The spelling of Afrikaans (a daughter language of early modern Dutch) has evolved in the exact opposite direction and IJ has been completely replaced by Y.

Archaic use of Y in Dutch survives in some personal names. For example, the surname ' was often changed into Spyker and Snijder into Snyder.

IJ was also used in the Latin Assyrian alphabet, which was used between 1930 and 1938 during the U.S.S.R.'s Latinisation campaign. It represented the close front unrounded vowel (i).

thumb|The words ' and yoghurt in various forms. Depending on the form of handwriting or font used, the IJ and Y can look either nearly identical or very different.

thumb|Apt to confusion: (1) i + j, (2) ligature ij, (3) y with diaeresis, (4) y; all in [[Garamond typeface]]

thumb|Logo of the [[Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.]]

thumb|Two signs of [[Rijssen railway station, each using a different format]]

thumb|IJ here is written as one letter.

thumb|Here, IJ is written as Y.

History

IJ probably developed out of ii, representing a long sound (which it still does in some cases, such as in the word ' and in several Dutch dialects). The Winkler Prins encyclopedia states that ij is the 25th letter of the Dutch alphabet, placed between X and Y.

However, this definition is not generally accepted.

In words where i and j are in different syllables, they do not form the digraph ij. In compound words, a hyphen is added, as in gummi-jas.

Netherlands

In the Netherlands, IJ is often used as a ligature:

  • In Dutch primary schools, ij used to be taught as being the 25th letter of the alphabet, and some primary school writing materials still list it as such. However, ij is according to Onze Taal not part of the Dutch alphabet and is usually sorted under the i as it is considered to consist of two letters.

Support for this property in software is limited. Poorly localised text editors with autocorrect 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 the CSS property <code>text-transform: capitalize</code> are specified to be handled with Unicode language-specific case mapping rules (content language being indicated with HTML language attributes, such as <code>lang="nl"</code> for Dutch), but support for language-specific cases is limited to Mozilla Firefox (version 14 and above) .

Collation

Dutch dictionaries since about 1850 invariably sort ij as an i followed by a j, i.e. between ih and ik. This is the preferred sorting by the Taalunie. The digraph "ei" in "Eises", like other digraphs in Dutch, is shortened to one letter.

Stress

thumb|The Dutch word (almost, nearly) with ad hoc stress on the first syllable indicated by two acute accents on the digraph ij

In Dutch orthography, ad hoc indication of stress can be marked by placing an acute 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 the IJ (even though J by itself is not a vowel, the digraph IJ represents one distinct vowel sound). However, due to technical limitations the accent on the j is often omitted in electronic documents: "". Nevertheless, in Unicode it is possible to combine characters into a j with an acute accent — "" — though this might not be supported or rendered correctly by some fonts or systems. This j́ is the combination of the regular (soft-dotted) j (U+006A) and the combining acute accent &nbsp;́ (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 &nbsp;́ (U+0301), resulting in ȷ́.

Spelling

can be spelled out in two ways, depending on whether the speller considers ij to be one letter or not:

  • V – R – IJ – D – A – G
  • V – R – I – J – D – A – G

Wide inter-letter spacing

thumb|upright|On this signboard of a liquor store (), IJ occupies the same space as single letters. The I is put over the lower end of the J to reinforce their unity, but this is optional and I and J can also be found separately on other signs

When words are written with large inter-letter spacing, IJ is often, but not always, kept together. F&nbsp;r&nbsp;a&nbsp;n&nbsp;k&nbsp;r&nbsp;ij&nbsp;k or F&nbsp;r&nbsp;a&nbsp;n&nbsp;k&nbsp;r&nbsp;i&nbsp;j&nbsp;k.

When words are written from top to bottom with non-rotated letters IJ, while not mandatory, keeping them together is largely preferred.

In Belgium, French Braille is used, in which is written simply as + : .

Encoding

The Dutch ij is not present in the ASCII code, nor in any of the ISO 8859 character encodings. Therefore, the digraph is most often encoded as an i followed by a j. The ligature is present as a national-use character within the Dutch version of ISO 646, one implementation of which is of DEC's National Replacement Character Set (NRCS) These characters are considered compatibility-decomposable. Therefore, even with Unicode available, it is recommended to encode ij as two separate letters. Nonetheless, some fonts use this code point for the ligated form of IJ if it exists.

Keyboards

While Dutch typewriters usually have a separate key for lowercase ij, Belgian typewriters do not. In the Netherlands, a QWERTY 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 of AZERTY keyboard layout (KBD120) is widely used. None of these keyboards feature a key for ij or IJ.

Not as a digraph

thumb|upright|This Dutch shopkeeper wrote 'byoux' instead of '<nowiki/>'.

If the i and the j belong to different syllables, such as in the mathematical term (syllablised "bi‧jec‧tie"), words with old spelling (syllablised "mi‧ni‧jurk"), (syllablised "ski‧jas"), foreign placenames like , , or person names like , , , they do not form a ligature or a single letter. Earlier statements about sorting ij on par with y, keeping ij together in the kerning of printed texts, the single square in crossword puzzles, etc., do not apply.

References

Further reading

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