Î

Î, î (i-circumflex) is a letter in the Friulian, Kurdish, and Romanian alphabets. This letter also appears in French, Turkish, Italian, Welsh and Walloon languages as a variant of letter “i”.

Afrikaans

In Afrikaans, î is a punctuated form of i: wîe, the plural of wig ('wedge').

Doulos SIL glyphs for Majuscule and minuscule î.

Kurdish

Î is the 12th letter of the Kurdish Kurmanji alphabet and represents /iː/: Kurdî ([ˈkuɾdiː], 'Kurdish language').

Romanian

Î is the 12th letter of the Romanian alphabet and denotes /ɨ/. This sound is also represented in Romanian as letter â. The difference is that â is used in the middle of a word, as in România, but î is used at the beginning or the end of a word: înțelegere (understanding), a urî (to hate). A compound word starting or ending with the letter î retains it, however, even if it is in the middle of the word: neînțelegere (misunderstanding).

Italian

Î is a variant of I in Italian. It should be used when forming the plural of male nouns ending in -io to avoid stressing the wrong syllable: principio /prinˈtʃipjo/ (principle) has the plural principî /prinˈtʃipi/, and principe /ˈprintʃipe/ (prince) has principi /ˈprintʃipi/ as plural. However, the usage of Î in Italian is rapidly decreasing; most Italians write principi for the plurals of both principio and principe.

French

Î is a letter which appears in several French words, like naître (to be born), abîme (abyss), maître (master), (crème) fraîche and more. Unlike Â, Ê, and Ô, the circumflex does not alter the pronunciation of î or û.

The circumflex usually denotes the exclusion of a letter (usually an s) that was in a prior version of the word:

• voster became vôtre.
• abismus became abisme and then abîme.
• magister became maistre and then maître.

The 1990 spelling reforms removed the accents if they are not required to distinguish between homonyms and so naitre, abime, maitre and fraiche no longer take the circumflex. Vôtre, however, (meaning 'your one' as a pronoun) uses the circumflex to distinguish it from votre (meaning 'your' as a possessive determiner).

Turkish

In Turkish, î can indicate the /iː/ sound in Arabic loanwords where it is used as an adjectival suffix that makes an adjective from a noun: hayatî (vital), iktisadî (economical), siyasî (political) etc.

Welsh

In Welsh, î is used to represent long stressed i [iː] when, without the circumflex, the vowel would be pronounced as short {{IPA-cy|ɪ|} (dîm [diːm], the mutated form of "team"), as opposed to dim [dɪm] "no, nought, nothing".

Other usage

Character mappings

See also

• Circumflex
• ^I