IJ (digraph)

Common card · No. 318956

IJ (minuscule: ij; Dutch pronunciation: [ɛi] ), also encountered as Unicode compatibility characters IJ and ij, is a digraph of the letters i and j. Occurring in the Dutch language, it is sometimes considered a ligature, or a letter in itself. In most fonts that have a separate character for ij, the two composing parts are not connected but are separate glyphs, which are sometimes slightly kerned. An ij in written Dutch usually represents the diphthong [ɛi], similar to the pronunciation of ⟨ay⟩ in "pay", and is preserved in such Dutch spellings as the place-name IJsselmeer. In standard Dutch and most Dutch dialects, there are two possible spellings for the diphthong [ɛi]: ij and ei, with no clear usage rules. 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. In certain Dutch dialects (notably West Flemish and Zeelandic) and the Dutch Low Saxon dialects of Low German, a difference in the pronunciation of ei and...

Read on Wikipedia · Image 1234qwer1234qwer4, CC BY-SA 4.0