J

In English, ⟨j⟩ most commonly represents the affricate /dʒ/. In Old English, the phoneme /dʒ/ was represented orthographically with ⟨cg⟩ and ⟨cȝ⟩.[6] Under the influence of Old French, which had a similar phoneme deriving from Latin /j/, English scribes began to use ⟨i⟩ (later ⟨j⟩) to represent word-initial /dʒ/ in Old English (for example, iest and, later jest), while using ⟨dg⟩ elsewhere (for example, hedge).[6] Later, many other uses of ⟨i⟩ (later ⟨j⟩) were added in loanwords from French and other languages (e.g. adjoin, junta). The first English language book to make a clear distinction between ⟨i⟩ and ⟨j⟩ was published in 1633.[7] In loan words such as raj, ⟨j⟩ may represent /ʒ/. In some of these, including raj, Azerbaijan, Taj Mahal, and Beijing, the regular pronunciation /dʒ/ is actually closer to the native pronunciation, making the use of /ʒ/ an instance of a hyperforeignism.[8] Occasionally, ⟨j⟩ represents the original /j/ sound, as in Hallelujah and fjord (see Yodh for details). In words of Spanish origin, where ⟨j⟩ represents the voiceless velar fricative [x] (such as jalapeño), English speakers usually approximate with the voiceless glottal fricative /h/.

In English, ⟨j⟩ is the fourth least frequently used letter in words, being more frequent only than ⟨z⟩, ⟨q⟩, and ⟨x⟩. It is, however, quite common in proper nouns, especially personal names.

Pronunciation of written ⟨j⟩ in European languages

The great majority of Germanic languages, such as German, Dutch, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian, use ⟨j⟩ for the palatal approximant /j/, which is usually represented by the letter ⟨y⟩ in English. Notable exceptions are English, Scots and (to a lesser degree) Luxembourgish. ⟨j⟩ also represents /j/ in Albanian, and those Uralic, Slavic and Baltic languages that use the Latin alphabet, such as Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Polish, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Latvian and Lithuanian. Some related languages, such as Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian, also adopted ⟨j⟩ into the Cyrillic alphabet for the same purpose. Because of this standard, the lower case letter was chosen to be used in the IPA as the phonetic symbol for the sound.

In the Romance languages, ⟨j⟩ has generally developed from its original palatal approximant value in Latin to some kind of fricative. In French, Portuguese, Catalan, and Romanian it has been fronted to the postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ (like ⟨s⟩ in English measure). In Spanish, by contrast, it has been both devoiced and backed from an earlier /ʝ/ to a present-day /x/ ~ /h/,[9] with the actual phonetic realization depending on the speaker's dialect/s.

In modern standard Italian spelling, only Latin words, proper nouns (such as Jesi, Letojanni, Juventus etc.) or those borrowed from foreign languages have ⟨j⟩. Until the 19th century, ⟨j⟩ was used instead of ⟨i⟩ in diphthongs, as a replacement for final -ii, and in vowel groups (as in Savoja); this rule was quite strict for official writing. ⟨j⟩ is also used to render /j/ in dialect, e.g. Romanesco dialect ⟨ajo⟩ [ajo] (garlic; cf. Italian aglio [aʎo]). The Italian novelist Luigi Pirandello used ⟨j⟩ in vowel groups in his works written in Italian; he also wrote in his native Sicilian language, which still uses the letter ⟨j⟩ to represent /j/ (and sometimes also [dʒ] or [gj], depending on its environment).[10] The Maltese language is not a Romance language but has been deeply influenced by them (especially Sicilian) and it uses ⟨j⟩ for the sound /j/ (cognate of the Semitic yod).

In Basque, the diaphoneme represented by ⟨j⟩ has a variety of realizations according to the regional dialect: [j, ʝ, ɟ, ʒ, ʃ, x] (the last one is typical of Gipuzkoa).

Among non-European languages that have adopted the Latin script, ⟨j⟩ stands for /ʒ/ in Turkish and Azerbaijani, for /ʐ/ in Tatar. ⟨j⟩ stands for /dʒ/ in Indonesian, Somali, Malay, Igbo, Shona, Oromo, Turkmen, and Zulu. It represents a voiced palatal plosive /ɟ/ in Konkani, Yoruba, and Swahili. In Kiowa, ⟨j⟩ stands for a voiceless alveolar plosive, /t/.

⟨j⟩ stands for /dʒ/ in the romanization systems of most of the Languages of India such as Hindi and Telugu and stands for /dʑ/ in the Romanization of Japanese.

For Chinese languages, ⟨j⟩ stands for /t͡ɕ/ in Mandarin Chinese Pinyin system, the unaspirated equivalent of ⟨q⟩ (/t͡ɕʰ/). In Wade–Giles, ⟨j⟩ stands for Mandarin Chinese /ʐ/. Pe̍h-ōe-jī of Hokkien and Tâi-lô for Taiwanese Hokkien, ⟨j⟩ stands for /z/ and /ʑ/, or /d͡z/ and /d͡ʑ/, pending on accents. In Jyutping for Cantonese, ⟨j⟩ stands for /j/.

The Royal Thai General System of Transcription does not use the letter ⟨j⟩, although it is used in some proper names and non-standard transcriptions to represent either จ [tɕ] or ช [tɕʰ] (the latter following Pali/Sanskrit root equivalents).

In romanized Pashto, ⟨j⟩ represents ځ, pronounced [dz].

In the Qaniujaaqpait spelling of the Inuktitut language, ⟨j⟩ is used to transcribe /j/.

In the Wingdings font by Microsoft, the letter "J" is rendered as a smiley face (this is distinct from the Unicode code point U+263A, which renders as ☺). In Microsoft applications, ":)" is automatically replaced by a smiley rendered in a specific font face when composing rich text documents or HTML email. This autocorrection feature can be switched off or changed to a Unicode smiley.[19] [20]