The letter "Y"

Y:
The 25th letter of the modern English alphabet.
Any of the speech sounds represented by the letter y.
The 25th in a series.
Something shaped like the letter Y.

Y:
Y is the twenty-fifth letter of the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is
wy, sometimes spelled wye (both pronounced [waɪ]).

History
The original ancestor of Y was the Semitic letter Waw, which was also the
ultimate origin of the modern letters F, U, V, and W. See F for details.

In Ancient Greek, Υψιλον (Ypsilon) was pronounced IPA /u/, then later on as
/y/ — a 'rounded' vowel similar to that in the word 'few'. The Romans had
already borrowed this as the letter V, to represent both the vowel /u/ as
well as the consonant /w/, but in later times, because the pronunciation of
Ypsilon in Greek had shifted to /y/, they borrowed it directly in its
original form, stem and all, as Y — mainly to represent names and words taken
from Greek.

The letter Y was used in Old English, as in Latin, with the value /y/;
however, some claim that this use was an independent invention in England
created by stacking a V and an I, unrelated to the Latin use of the letter.
Regardless, it is fairly likely that the letter, although technically named Y
Græca (pronounced [u graɪka]) meaning 'Greek u' in contradistinction from
native Latin /u/, came to be analyzed as the letter V (pronounced [u�]) atop
the letter I (pronounced [i:]). The letter was thus referred to as [u� i�],
which after [u�] became the glide [w] and after English's Great Vowel Shift
naturally became [waɪ].

By Middle English, [y] had lost its roundedness and become [i], and Y came
to be used with the same values as I, [i�] and [ɪ] and [j]. Those dialects
that retained [y] spelled it with U, under French influence.

The Modern English use of Y is a direct continuation of this Middle English
use. Thus the words myth [of Greek origin] and gift [of Old English origin],
which originally contained high front rounded vowels, both have [ɪ].

With the introduction of printing, the letter Y was used by Caxton and other
printers in England to represent the letter thorn (Þ, þ) which was lacking
from continental typefaces, resulting in the use of ye for the word the.

Usage
In Spanish, Y is called i griega, in Catalan i grega, in Polish igrek, in
French i grec - all meaning "Greek i"; in most other European languages the
Greek name is still used; in German and in Portuguese, for example, it's
called ypsilon. The letter Y was originally established as a vowel. In the
standard English language, the letter Y is traditionally regarded as a
consonant (as depicted in American game show Wheel of Fortune), but as a
survey of almost any English text, including this one, will show, Y more
commonly functions as a vowel. In many cases, it is known as a semivowel.

Originally, Y was a vowel letter in Greek, representing [u] and later on,
front rounded [y], becoming [i] in Modern Greek.

In English morphology, -y is a diminutive suffix.

Other Germanic and Scandinavian Languages
When not serving as the second vowel in a diphthong, it has the sound value
[y] in German, in Finnish, and the Scandinavian languages, where it can never
be a consonant. But in diphthongs, as in the name name Meyer, it serves as a
variant of "i".

In Dutch, Y appears only in loanwords and names and is usually pronounced
[i]. It is often left out of the Dutch alphabet and replaced with the "letter
IJ". In Afrikaans, a development of Dutch, Y denotes the diphthong [EI],
probably as a result of mixing lower case i and y or may derive from the IJ
ligature.

Spanish
In the Spanish language, Y was used as a word-initial form of I that was
more visible. (German has used J in a similar way.) Hence el Yugo y las
Flechas was a symbol sharing the initials of Isabella I of Castile (Ysabel)
and Ferdinand II of Aragon. This spelling was reformed by the Royal Spanish
Academy and currently is only found in proper names spelt archaicly, such as
Ybarra or CYII, the symbol of the Canal de Isabel II. X is also still used in
Spanish with a different sound in some archaisms.

Appearing alone as a word, the letter Y means "and" in Spanish. It is
pronounced as "EE" is in English (in the IPA its sound is written [i]). In
Spanish family names, an y (meaning "and") can separate the father's surname
from the mother's surname as in "Santiago Ramón y Cajal". Catalan names use i
for this.

Other Languages
Italian, too, has Y only in very few loanwords. In Polish and GuaranÃ*, it
represents the close central unrounded vowel.

In contrast, in the Latin transcription of Nenets (Nyenec) the letter "y"
palatalizes the preceding consonant. The letter Y nicely shows how letters
change their function.

When used as a vowel in Vietnamese, the letter y represents the close front
unrounded vowel. When used as a monophthong, it is functionally equivalent to
the Vietnamese letter i. Thus, Mỹ Lai does not rhyme but mỳ Lee does. There
have been efforts to replace all such uses with i altogether, but they have
been largely unsuccessful.



--
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Y. Me

=?Utf-8?B?T1RITUFO?=

dare I ask...Why?

kpg

"kpg" <> wrote in message
news:Xns981F802F2F553ipostthereforeiam@127.0.0.1.. .
> dare I ask...Why didn't you precede your subject header with "OT:"?

IFYPFY

Frisbee®

As Frisbee® once said in microsoft.public.cert.exam.mcse

>> dare I ask...Why didn't you precede your subject header with "OT:"?
>
> IFYPFY

Because his name starts with OT!


kp "that should tell you something" g

kpg

"kpg" <> wrote in message
news:Xns981F825A97E83ipostthereforeiam@127.0.0.1.. .
> As Frisbee® once said in microsoft.public.cert.exam.mcse
>
>>> dare I ask...Why didn't you precede your subject header with "OT:"?
>>
>> IFYPFY
>
> Because his name starts with OT!
>

Does this mean the MAN is OT?

Thor

Thor wrote:

> Does this mean the MAN is OT?

Definitely something to consider...

- OT: Man

Consider now that OTHMAN and Man are two trolls who are currently
trolling this ng.

Myriad Possibilities present themselves instantly :
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. OTHMAN and Man are the same person. The name "OTHMAN" stands for
"Off Topic He-man".
2. OTHMAN and Man are conjoined twins.
3. OTHMAN and Man are twins but not conjoined.
4. OTHMAN and Man are gay partners.
5. OTHMAN and Man are two different people who don't know each other,
but both believe that trolling is the only cure for their maladies.
6. OTHMAN and Man are two different people who don't know each other,
but both believe that they are men.
:
:
:

Hmmm... I guess we'll have to feed all these probability equations into
the MCNGP Supercomputer to see which of them is most probable.

Cerebrus

On Mon, 14 Aug 2006 14:32:23 -0700, Cerebrus cast into the ether:

> but both believe that trolling is the only cure for their maladies.
> 6. OTHMAN and Man are two different people who don't know each other,
> but both believe that they are men.
> :
> :
> :
>
> Hmmm... I guess we'll have to feed all these probability equations into
> the MCNGP Supercomputer to see which of them is most probable.

It would likely come back 7. None of the above/All of the above.

--
JaR
MCNGP 22
Here there be dragons
Remove hat to reply

JaR

"JaR" wrote:

> On Mon, 14 Aug 2006 14:32:23 -0700, Cerebrus cast into the ether:
>
> > but both believe that trolling is the only cure for their maladies.
> > 6. OTHMAN and Man are two different people who don't know each other,
> > but both believe that they are men.
> > :
> > :
> > :
> >
> > Hmmm... I guess we'll have to feed all these probability equations into
> > the MCNGP Supercomputer to see which of them is most probable.
>
> It would likely come back 7. None of the above/All of the above.
>
> --
> JaR
> MCNGP 22
> Here there be dragons
> Remove hat to reply
>
while I was away you people didn't answer the question?
Has anybody come with an answer yet,

I was away, you start playing like "when the cats away the mice will play".
I aint your Boss. You get me.




--
------------------
Love it or Hate it.

=?Utf-8?B?T1RITUFO?=

did you hear =?Utf-8?B?T1RITUFO?= <> say
in news:FF635325-C609-4BD0-8A9F-:

> while I was away you people didn't answer the question?
> Has anybody come with an answer yet,
>
> I was away, you start playing like "when the cats away the mice will
> play". I aint your Boss. You get me.
>

it's not that I'm lazy, it's just that I don't care.

--
The InterNeil MCNGP Triple X

- I am Earl Schieb of Borg. RIGHT! I'll assimilate anyone for $39.95...

Neil

> > while I was away you people didn't answer the question?
> > Has anybody come with an answer yet,
> >
> > I was away, you start playing like "when the cats away the mice will
> > play". I aint your Boss. You get me.
> >
>
> it's not that I'm lazy, it's just that I don't care.
I aint asked for care. do you remember when you were on the NASA's Rocket
and You took the responsibility to take care of yourself.

> --
> The InterNeil MCNGP Triple X
Explain yourself Mr InterNeil.

> - I am Earl Schieb of Borg. RIGHT! I'll assimilate anyone for $39.95...
I will contact you regarding this matter!




--
------------------
guess, what is it?

=?Utf-8?B?T1RITUFO?=