From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Basic Latin alphabet
Aa	Bb	Cc	Dd
Ee	Ff	Gg	Hh
Ii	Jj	Kk	Ll	Mm	Nn
Oo	Pp	Qq	Rr	Ss	Tt
Uu	Vv	Ww	Xx	Yy	Zz

‹I› is the ninth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet, a vowel. Its English name (pronounced /ˈaɪ/) is spelled ‹i›, or rarely ‹ie›; the plural form of I, ies, is rare.^[1]

History

Egyptian hieroglyph ˁ	Proto-Semitic Y	Phoenician yodh	Etruscan I Ii	Greek Iota

In Semitic, the letter was probably originally a pictogram for an arm with hand, derived from a similar hieroglyph that represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative (/ʕ/) in Egyptian, but was reassigned to /j/ (as in English "yes") by Semites, because their word for "arm" began with that sound. This letter could also be used to represent /i/, the close front unrounded vowel, mainly in foreign words.

The Greeks adopted a form of this Phoenician yodh 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/. The modern letter ‹j› was firstly 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. The dot over the lowercase 'i' is sometimes called a tittle. In the Turkish alphabet, dotted and dotless I are considered separate letters, representing a front and back vowel, respectively, and both have upper-case (‹I›, ‹İ›) and lowercase (‹ı›, ‹i›) forms.

In modern English, ‹i› represents different sounds, either a "long" diphthong /aɪ/, which developed from Middle English /iː/ after the Great Vowel Shift of the 15th century, or the "short", /ɪ/ as in bill.

Codes for computing

Alternative representations of I

NATO phonetic	Morse code
India	··

Signal flag	Flag semaphore	Braille

In Unicode, the capital ‹I› is codepoint U+0049 and the lower case ‹i› is U+0069.

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

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.

See also

• И (Cyrillic)
• Tittle
• Dotted and dotless I

References

1. ^ Brown & Kiddle (1870) The institutes of English grammar, p 19.
   Ies is the plural of the name of the letter; the plural of the letter itself is I's, Is, i's, or is.

Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary

The Universal Character Set

Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER I
Basic Latin	U+0049

Translingual

Wikipedia has an article on:

I

Wikipedia

Alternative forms

• (Roman numeral one): Ⅰ, i, ⅰ

Letter

I upper case (lower case i)

1. The ninth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.

I upper case (lower case ı)

1. The letter i without a dot above, in both the upper case and the lower case versions.

See also

• (Latin script):  Aa  Bb  Cc  Dd  Ee  Ff  Gg  Hh  Ii  Jj  Kk  Ll  Mm  Nn  Oo  Pp  Qq  Rr  Ss  Tt  Uu  Vv  Ww  Xx  Yy  Zz
• (Variations of letter I):  Íí  Ìì  Ĭĭ  Îî  Ǐǐ  Ïï  Ḯḯ  Ĩĩ  Įį  Īī  Ỉỉ  Ȉȉ  Ȋȋ  Ịị  Ḭḭ  Ɨɨ  ᵻ  ᶖ   İi   Iı  ɪ  Ｉｉ  fi  IJij  IJij
• (Letters using dot sign):  Ȧȧ  Ạạ  Ặặ  Ậậ  Ǡǡ  Ḃḃ  Ḅḅ  Ċċ  Ḋḋ  Ḍḍ  Ėė  Ẹẹ  Ḟḟ  Ġġ  Ḣḣ  Ḥḥ  Ii  İi  Iı  Ịị  Ḳḳ  Ḷḷ  Ṁṁ  Ṃṃ  Ṅṅ  Ṇṇ  Ȯȯ  Ọọ  Ợợ  Ṗṗ  Ṙṙ  Ṛṛ  Ṡṡ  Ṣṣ  ẛ  Ṫṫ  Ṭṭ  Ụụ  Ựự  Ṿṿ  Ẇẇ  Ẉẉ  Ẋẋ  Ẏẏ  Ỵỵ  Żż  Ẓẓ

Symbol

I

1. (chemistry) Symbol for iodine.
2. (physics) Isotopic spin.
3. (license plate codes) Italy
4. (physics, electronics) Electrical current.
5. (biochemistry) IUPAC 1-letter abbreviation for isoleucine

Cardinal number

I (upper case Roman numeral, lower case i)

1. cardinal number one.

Usage notes

In titles, this is read as "the first", so George I is read George the first.

See also

• Next: II (2)

See also

Other representations of I:

Letter styles

Capital and lowercase versions of I, in normal and italic type

Uppercase and lowercase I in Fraktur

References

• “I” in The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.
• “I” in Dictionary.com Unabridged, v1.0.1, Lexico Publishing Group, 2006.

English

Pronunciation

• IPA: /aɪ/, SAMPA: /aI/
•  Audio (US)^{help, file}

  Rhymes: -aɪ

• Homophones: eye, aye, ay

Etymology 1

Abbreviation.

Abbreviation

I

1. (US, roadway) interstate

Etymology 2

• Old French i, from Latin ī, from Etruscan I (i).

Noun

I (plural Is)

1. The capitalised ninth letter of the English alphabet, preceded by H and followed by J.

Etymology 3

Middle English I from Old English ih from Proto-Indo-European *éǵh₂om. Akin to M.E. ik (N. dial.) and ich (S. dial.) from O.E. iċ "I", Early Mod. Eng. dialectal ik "I"; Frisian, Dutch and Low German ik, German ich, Icel. ég, eg, Norw. & Dan. jeg, Swedish jag, Old Norse ek; Latin ego, Ancient Greek ἐγώ, Russian я.

Pronoun

I first person singular subject personal pronoun (objective me, possessive my, possessive noun mine, reflexive myself)

1. The speaker or writer, referred to as the grammatical subject of a sentence.

Translations

Noun

I (uncountable)

1. (metaphysics) The ego.

Synonyms

• (vulgar, slang) my ass, m'ass

References

• “I” in The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.
• “I” in Dictionary.com Unabridged, v1.0.1, Lexico Publishing Group, 2006.
• "I" in WordNet 3.0, Princeton University, 2006.

American Sign Language

Letter

(Stokoe I)

1. The letter I

Danish

Pronoun

I

1. (personal) you, you all

Inflection

• nominative: I
• accusative: jer
• dative: jer

Related terms

• du
• jeres

Dutch

Pronunciation

• (letter name): IPA: /i/

Letter

I (capital, lowercase i)

1. The ninth letter of the Dutch alphabet.

See also

• Previous letter: H
• Next letter: J

Finnish

Noun

I

1. improbatur

German

Noun

I n.

1. i (name of the letter I, i)

Italian

Pronunciation

• IPA: /i/, SAMPA: /i/

Noun

Italian Wikipedia has an article on:

I

Wikipedia ^it

I m. and f. inv.

1. The ninth letter of the Italian, and of the Latin alphabets

Romanian

Pronunciation

• IPA: /i/

Letter

I (capital, lowercase i)

1. The eleventh letter of the Romanian alphabet generally representing the phoneme /i/. Preceded by H and followed by Î.

Usage notes

• Before and after vowels, this letter usually takes on the sound of /j/

  ianuarie /'ja.nu.a.ri.e/

  femei /fe'mej/

• At the ends of words (except verb infinitives, and those ending in a consonant cluster ending in l or r), the letter palatalizes the previous syllable and is "whispered": /ʲ/

  băieţi /bə'jeʦʲ/

Slovene

Slovene Wikipedia has an article on:

I

Wikipedia ^sl

Pronunciation

Letter

I (capital, lowercase i)

1. The 10th letter of the Slovene alphabet. Preceded by H and followed by J.

Spanish

Letter

I (upper case, lower case i)

1. The tenth letter of the Spanish alphabet.

Swedish

Pronoun

I (personal pronoun)

1. (archaic) you (second person plural)

Synonyms

• ni