IJ (digraph)

IJ (digraph)

The IJ (lowercase ij) is the digraph of the letters i and j. Occurring in the Dutch language, it is sometimes considered a ligature, or even a letter in itself – although in most fonts that have a separate character for ij the two composing parts are not connected, but are separate glyphs, sometimes slightly kerned.

An ij in written Dutch usually represents the diphthong . In standard Dutch, and most Dutch dialects, there are two possible spellings for the diphthong : ij and ei. This causes confusion for schoolchildren, who need to study lists of words with ei and with ij. To distinguish between the two, the ij is referred to as the lange ij ("long ij"), the ei as korte ei ("short ei") or simply E – I. This difficulty is aggravated by the fact that the two variants have different meanings, e.g. lijden (to suffer) and leiden (to lead).

The ij originally represented a 'long i'. This can still be seen in the etymology of some words, and in the Dutch form of several foreign placenames: Berlin and Paris are spelled Berlijn and Parijs. Nowadays, the pronunciation follows the spelling, and they are pronounced with .

In certain Dutch dialects (notably West Flemish and Zeelandic), as well as the Low German Dialects of Dutch Low Saxon, which today are written based on Dutch spelling, a difference in the pronunciation of ei and ij is maintained.

Whether pronounced identically to ei or not, the pronunciation is often perceived to be difficult by native English speakers. The tendency is to pronounce ij as, which in turn can lead to confusion among native listeners.

The IJ is different from the letter Y. It used to be common, in particular when writing in capitals, to write Y instead of IJ. In fact this was the official spelling in the earlier part of the 19th century. That practice has now long been deprecated, but the standard Dutch pronunciation of the letter Y is ij when reading the alphabet. Also, in scientific disciplines such as mathematics and physics, the symbol y is usually pronounced ij.

In Dutch, the letter Y only occurs in loanwords, proper names, or in (variantly spelled) old Dutch. Y is called Griekse IJ ("Greek Y"), I-grec (the latter from French, with the stress on grec), or Ypsilon. However, in the related language Afrikaans, the Y has replaced the IJ. Furthermore, the names of Dutch immigrants to the United States, Canada and Australia often were Anglicized, so that the IJ became a Y; for example, the surname Spijker often became Spyker.