THE SOUNDS OF J
#letter J #sounds #orthography
As designers and typographers or students thereof perhaps we should be glad we only have to worry about letter forms and shapes and not orthography.
Especially for languages other than English:
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The Sounds of J
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J /dʒeɪ/
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Letter form
J < I < iota < yod |
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Other languages that write /dʒ/ as J include:
Hindi Pashto Malay Somali Telugu Scots Zulu |
/dʒ/
voiced post alveolar affricate
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Originally written as “cg” in Old English shifting to dg and then J in the Middle Ages
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However in some languages the letter J represents /x/ /h/ or /ʒ/ or /y/
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Yes initial J in English is usually not /y/ but /dʒ/ !
Possibly the example of orthography not seeming to match usage might be the Spanish usage of spelling words like Jesus or Julio and other words with a J altho its pronounced as /x/ or sometimes /h/ .
Why is this so? Well to simplify things basically PIE ProtoIndoEuropean doesn't seem to have used initial J sounds of any kind but rather a g or gh that changed to a variety of sounds including j or y or z or dz etc . Hence the diversity of spellings in modern European and other languages.
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