THE SOUNDS OF J

 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:

The Sounds of J
	J /dʒeɪ/	Letter form J < I < iota < yod
Other languages that write /dʒ/ as J include: Hindi Pashto Malay Somali Telugu Scots Zulu	/dʒ/ voiced post alveolar affricate	Originally written as “cg” in Old English shifting to dg and then J in the Middle Ages
	However in some languages the letter J represents /x/ /h/ or /ʒ/ or /y/

Yes the letter J has been used to represent all those sounds !

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.

Kasumi Two

 Posting KASUMI TWO partly yo claim copyright and partly to remind anyone visiting I also do digital painting/ illustrations design whatever you want to call it with Inkscape

Copyright J. Vaux 2021 

I and J

Its July so I'm going thru my files looking for things with a J theme. You may be aware that the letter J developed from the  I letterform. Here's a comparision of the letterforms to illustrate this. 

I and J

#typography #fonts J i letterforms

People similar with the history of scripts known that the letter J developed from I for various phonetic and historical reasons.

Here's a couple of sample images of I and J in various fonts for reference.

more next time ! 

J for January

J for January .

Here's what J looks like in various fonts.

Hope it gives you some inspiration for #calligraphy and #typography!

J sampler

January June July All start with J  so here's some letter shapes to hopefully inspire your typographic designs from a variety of fonts. What can you do with the letter J?