İ

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I with dot above
İ i
Usage
Writing systemLatin script
Typealphabetic
Language of originTurkish language
Phonetic usage[i]
[j]
[ɪj]
[əj]
Unicode codepointU+0130, U+0069
History
Development
Time period1928 to present
SistersI ı
Other
Writing directionLeft-to-Right
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and  , see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

İ, or i, called dotted I or i-dot, is a letter used in the Latin-script alphabets of Azerbaijani, Crimean Tatar, Gagauz, Kazakh, Tatar, and Turkish. It commonly represents the close front unrounded vowel /i/ except in Kazakh in which it additionally represents the voiced palatal approximant /j/ and the diphthongs /ɪj/ and /əj/. All languages that use it use also its dotless counterpart I but not the basic Latin letter I.

In computing[edit]

The dotted I is encoded into Unicode with the code point U+0130 (U+0069 for the lowercase letter) as part of the Latin Extended-A block.[1]

Character information
Preview İ i
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER
I WITH DOT ABOVE
LATIN SMALL LETTER I
Encodings decimal hex dec hex
Unicode 304 U+0130 105 U+0069
UTF-8 196 176 C4 B0 105 69
Numeric character reference İ İ i i
Named character reference İ
ISO 8859-9 221 DD 105 69
ISO 8859-3 169 A9 105 69

Issues[edit]

The dotted and dotless I characters have caused issues in computing. Languages like Turkish have four variants of the letter I (opposed to two in English). This causes problems when, instead of the original mapping of i to I, Turkish maps i to the new İ, and ı to I, frequently breaking software logic.[2]

Usage in other languages[edit]

Both the dotted and dotless I can be used in transcriptions of Rusyn to allow distinguishing between the letters Ы and И, which would otherwise be both transcribed as "y", despite representing different phonemes. Under such transcription the dotted İ would represent the Cyrillic І, and the dotless I would represent either Ы or И, with the other being represented by "Y".

See also[edit]

  • Dotless I, the letter's dotless counterpart
  • Tittle – Diacritical mark, the dot element of the letters i and j

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Latin Extended-A" (PDF). Unicode Consortium. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2001-06-03. Retrieved 2023-11-21.
  2. ^ Texin, Tex. "Internationalization for Turkish: Dotted and Dotless Letter "I"". www.i18nguy.com. Retrieved 2023-11-21.