IJ (digraph)

IJ(lowercaseij;Dutch pronunciation:[ɛi]; also encountered asUnicode compatibility charactersĲ and ĳ) is adigraphof the lettersiandj. Occurring in theDutch language, it is sometimes considered aligature, or a letter in itself. In most fonts that have a separate character forij, the two composing parts are not connected but are separateglyphs, which are sometimes slightlykerned.
Anijin written Dutch usually represents thediphthong[ɛi], similar to the pronunciation of⟨ay⟩in "pay".In standard Dutch and most Dutchdialects, there are two possible spellings for the diphthong[ɛi]:ijandei, with no clear usage rules. To distinguish between the two, theijis referred to as thelange ij("longij"), theeiaskorte ei("shortei") or simplyE – I.In certain Dutch dialects (notablyWest FlemishandZeelandic) and theDutch Low Saxondialects ofLow German, a difference in the pronunciation ofeiandijis maintained. Whether it is pronounced identically toeior not, the pronunciation ofijis often perceived as being difficult by people who do not have either sound in their native language.
Theijoriginally represented a 'long i'.It used to be written asii, as inFinnishandEstonian, but for orthographic purposes, the secondiwas eventually elongated, which is a reason why it is calledlange ij. This can still be seen in the pronunciation of some words likebijzonder(bi.zɔn.dər), and the etymology of some words in the Dutch form of several foreign placenames:BerlinandParisare spelledBerlijnandParijs. Nowadays, the pronunciation mostly follows the spelling, and they are pronounced with[ɛi]. Theijis distinct from the lettery. Particularly when writing capitals, Y used to be common instead of IJ in the past. That practice has long been deprecated, since 1804, and the standard Dutch alphabet has the letterijin the alphabet between the "x" and the "z". The letter "y" is not part of the Dutch alphabet, but commonly used in loan words and archaic names.In scientific disciplines such asmathematicsandphysics, the symbolyis usually pronouncedij.
To distinguish theYfromIJin common speech, however,Yis often calledGriekse ij(meaning "GreekY"), a literal translation ofi-grec(fromFrench, with the stress ongrec:[iˈɡrɛk]) or alternatively calledYpsilon. In modern Dutch, the letterYoccurs only inloanwords,proper nouns, or when deliberately spelled as Early Modern Dutch. The spelling ofAfrikaans(adaughter languageof early modern Dutch) has evolved in the exact opposite direction andIJhas been completely replaced byY.
However, the ancient use of Y in Dutch has survived in some personal names, particularly those ofDutch immigrantsin theUnited States,Canada,AustraliaandNew Zealandwhere as a result ofanglicization, theIJbecame aY. For example, the surnameSpijkerwas often changed intoSpykerandSnijderintoSnyder.
IJprobably developed out ofii, representing a long[iː]sound (which it still does in some cases, such as in the wordbijzonderand in several Dutch dialects).In theMiddle Ages, theiwas written without adotin handwriting, and the combinationııwas often confused withu. Therefore, the secondiwas elongated:ıȷ. Later, the dots were added, albeit not inAfrikaans, a language that has its roots in Dutch. In this languageyis used instead.
Alternatively, the letterJmay have developed as aswashform ofi. In other European languages it was first used for the finaliinRoman numeralswhen there was more than oneiin a row, such asiijfor "three", to prevent the fraudulent addition of an extraito change the number. In Dutch, which had a nativeii, the "finaliin a row elongated" rule was applied as well, leading toij.
Another theory is thatIJmight have arisen from the lowercaseybeing split into two strokes in handwriting. At some time in the 15th or 16th century, this combination began to be spelled as a ligatureij. An argument against this theory is that even in handwriting which does not join letters,ijis often written as a single sign.
Some time after the birth of this new letter, the sound which was now represented byij, in most cases, began to be pronounced much likeeiinstead, but words containing it were still spelled the same. Nowadays,ijin most cases represents thediphthong[ɛi], except in the suffix-lijk, where it is usually pronounced as aschwa. In one special case, the Dutch wordbijzonder, the (old) sound[iː]is correct standard pronunciation, although[i]is more common and[ɛi]is also allowed.
Inproper names,ijoften appears instead ofiat the end of otherdiphthongs, where it does not affect the pronunciation:aaij,eij,oeij,ooijanduijare pronounced identically toaai[aːi],ei[ɛi],oei[ui],ooi[oːi]andui[œy]. This derives from an old orthographic practice (also seen in older French and German) of writingyinstead ofiafter another vowel; later, whenyandijcame to be seen as interchangeable, the spellings withijcame to be used.Spelling reforms and standardizationhave removed the redundantjs in common words, but proper names continue to use these archaic spellings.
As the rules of usage for theIJdiffer from those that apply to the many other digraphs in the Dutch language—in some situations behaving more as a single ligature or letter than a digraph—theIJis not only confusing to foreigners, but also a source of discussion among native speakers of Dutch. Its actual usage in theNetherlandsand in Flanders (Belgium) sometimes differs from the official recommendations.
Both theDutch Language Unionand theGenootschap Onze Taalconsider theijto be a digraph of the lettersiandj.The descriptive dictionaryVan Dale Groot woordenboek van de Nederlandse taalstates thatijis a "letter combination consisting of the signs i and j, used, in some words, to represent the diphthong ɛi."TheWinkler Prinsencyclopedia states thatijis the 25th letter of the Dutch alphabet, placed betweenXandY. 
However, this definition is not generally accepted.
In words whereiandjare in different syllables, theydo notform the digraphij. Incompound words, ahyphenis added, as ingummi-jas.
In the Netherlands,IJis often used as a ligature:
In Flanders (Belgium),IJis generally described in schools as a combination of two separate characters.
When a Dutch word starting withIJiscapitalised, the entire digraph is capitalised, as inIJsselmeerorIJmuiden.
Support for this property in software is limited. Poorlylocalisedtext editors withautocorrectfunctionality may incorrectly convert the second of two initial capital letters in a word to lowercase; such improper spelling can thus be found in informal writing. Support on the internet is similarly inconsistent: Web pages styled with theCSSpropertytext-transform: capitalizeare specified to be handled withUnicodelanguage-specificcase mapping rules(content language being indicated with HTML language attributes, such aslang="nl"for Dutch), but support for language-specific cases is limited toMozilla Firefox(version 14 and above) as of January 2021.
Dutch dictionariessince about 1850 invariably sortijas anifollowed by aj, i.e. betweenihandik. This is the preferred sorting by theTaalunie.On the other hand, some encyclopedias, like theWinkler Prins, 7th edition, sortijas a single letter positioned betweenxandy.
Telephone directoriesas well as theYellow Pagesin the Netherlands (but not those in Belgium) sortijandytogether, as if they were the same, betweenxandz. Thanks to this, surnames likeBruijnandBruynwhich sound the same (and even look similar), can be found in the same area. However,Bruin, though it sounds the same as well, is placed with "Brui-" and not with "Bruy-".
When words or (first) names are shortened to their initials, in the Netherlands a word or proper name starting withIJis abbreviated toIJ. For example,IJsbrand Eises Ypmais shortened toIJ. E. Ypma.The digraph "ei" in "Eises", like other digraphs in Dutch, is shortened to one letter.
In Dutch orthography,ad hocindication ofstresscan be marked by placing anacute accenton the vowel of the stressed syllable. In case of a diphthong or double vowel, both vowels should be marked with an acute accent; this also applies to theIJ(even thoughJby itself is not a vowel, the digraphIJrepresents one distinct vowel sound). However, due to technical limitations the accent on thejis often omitted in electronic documents: "bíjna".Nevertheless, inUnicodeit is possible tocombine charactersinto ajwith an acute accent — "bíj́na" — though this might not be supported or rendered correctly by somefontsor systems. Thisj́is the combination of the regular (soft-dotted)j(U+006A) and the combining acute accent  ́ (U+0301).
Vrijdagcan be spelled out in two ways, depending on whether the speller considersijto be one letter or not:
When words are written with large inter-letter spacing,IJis often, but not always, kept together.F r a n k r ij korF r a n k r i j k.
When words are written from top to bottom, with non-rotated letters,IJis usually, but not always, kept together. Keeping it together is the preferred way.
In Dutch names, interchangeability ofi,ijandyis frequent. Some names are changed unofficially for commercial reasons or by indifference:
The Dutch football team ofFeyenoordchanged its name from the original "Feijenoord" to "Feyenoord" after achieving international successes. This was done as a reaction to foreign people often mispronouncing the name. TheFeijenoord districtinRotterdam, the namesake of the football club maintains its original spelling.
In the Dutch phoneticradio alphabet, the codewordIJmuidenrepresents theIJ. This is clearly different from the codewordYpsilon, which is used to represent theY. Dutch and Belgian armed forces use the officialNATO phonetic alphabet, where "Y" is "Yankee" and "IJ" is spelled out "India Juliett".
Incrossword puzzles(except forScrabble– see next paragraph), and in the gameLingo,IJis considered one letter, filling one square, but theIJand theYare considered distinct. In other word games, the rules may vary.
The Dutch version of Scrabble has aYwith a face value of eight. Some players used it to representIJorY. The recent Dutch version comes with an example game, which clearly indicates thatYis onlyY, andIJshould be composed ofIandJ. In previous editions of Scrabble there was a single IJ sign.
In word games that make a distinction between vowels and consonants,IJis considered to be a vowel, if it is considered one letter. WhetherYis a vowel or a consonant, is another matter of discussion, sinceYcan represent both a vowel or a (half-) consonant.
In print, the letterÿ(lowercaseywithdiaeresis) andijlook very different, buthandwritingusually makesÿ,ijandY,IJlook identical. However, sinceyoccurs only in loanwords, the letterÿis extremely rare (if not altogether nonexistent) in Dutch.
Thelong ijextends below the baseline and so is written with a long stroke. It is often written as a single sign, even in handwriting that does not join letters.
On some road signs in the Netherlands,IJappears as a single glyph formed like aUwith a break in the left-hand stroke.
Dutch Braille, which is used in the Netherlands, has⟨ij⟩represented by⠽, which represents⟨y⟩in other varieties of Braille.⟨y⟩is written as⠠⠽.
In Belgium,French Brailleis used, in which⟨ij⟩is written simply as⟨i⟩+⟨j⟩:⠊⠚.
The Dutchijis not present in theASCIIcode, nor in any of theISO 8859character encodings. Therefore, the digraph is most often encoded as anifollowed by aj. The ligature is present as a national-use character within the Dutch version of ISO 646, one implementation of which is of DEC'sNational Replacement Character Set(NRCS)akacode page 1102,and it also existed in theAtari ST character set(but not in theGEM character setfor PCs) as well as in theLotus Multi-Byte Character Set(LMBCS).It is also present inUnicodein the Latin Extended-A range asU+0132ĲLATIN CAPITAL LIGATURE IJ(&IJlig;) andU+0133ĳLATIN SMALL LIGATURE IJ(&ijlig;).These characters are considered compatibility-decomposable.They are included for compatibility and round-trip convertibility with legacy encodings, but their use is discouraged.Therefore, even with Unicode available, it is recommended to encodeijas two separate letters.Nonetheless, some fonts use this code point for the ligated form of IJ if it exists.
While Dutch typewriters usually have a separate key for lowercaseij, Belgian typewriters do not.In the Netherlands, aQWERTYcomputer keyboard layout is common. The standard US layout (often in "International Mode") is widely used, although a specific but rarely used Dutch variant (KBD143) does exist. In Belgium, a specific Belgian variant ofAZERTYkeyboard layout (KBD120) is widely used. None of these keyboards feature a key forijorIJ.
If theiand thejbelong to different syllables, such as in the mathematical termbijectie(syllablised "bi‧jec‧tie"), words with old spellingminijurk(syllablised "mi‧ni‧jurk"),skijas(syllablised "ski‧jas"), foreign placenames likeBeijing,Dijon,Fijior person names likeKhadija,Elijah,Marija, they do not form a ligature or a single letter. Earlier statements about sortingijon par withy, keepingijtogether in thekerningof printed texts, the single square in crossword puzzles, etc., do not apply.