From its humble beginnings as a Roman numeral to its eventual tenth position in the English alphabet, J has had quite a linguistic journey.
When was聽闯听added to the alphabet?
J is a bit of a late bloomer; after all, it was the last letter added to the alphabet. It is no coincidence that I 补苍诲听J stand side by side鈥攖hey actually started out as the same character. The letter J began as a swash, a typographical embellishment for the already existing I. With the introduction of lowercase letters to the Roman numeric system, J was commonly used to denote the conclusion of a series of ones鈥攁s in 鈥渪iij鈥� for the number 13.
(A story for another day: the name of the dot over the 鈥渏鈥� and 鈥渋,鈥� and why we use them.)
础谤别听闯听补苍诲听滨听related?
J鈥檚 phonetic quest for independence probably began with the sound of the letter I. Originally a Phoenician pictogram representing a leg with a hand, and denoting a sound similar to the聽Y in 鈥測es,鈥� I was later adopted by Semitic groups聽to describe the word 鈥渁rm鈥� which, in Semitic languages, began with a J聽(also possessing the same Y sound as in 鈥測es鈥�).
How did聽闯听get its sound?
Both I and J were used interchangeably by scribes to express the sound of both the vowel and the consonant. It wasn鈥檛 until 1524 when Gian Giorgio Trissino, an Italian Renaissance grammarian known as the father of the letter J, made a clear distinction between the two sounds. Trissino鈥檚 contribution is important because once he distinguished the soft 闯听sound, as in 鈥渏am鈥� (probably a loan sound), he was able to identify the Greek 鈥淚esus鈥� a translation of the Hebrew 鈥淵eshua,鈥� as the Modern English 鈥淛esus.鈥� Thus the current phoneme for J was born. It always goes back to Jesus.
The English language is infamous for matching similar phonemes with different letters and J is certainly no exception. In addition to the aforementioned soft J sound, as in 鈥渏am,鈥� which is phonetically identical to the soft G as in 鈥済eneral,鈥� the J in Taj Mahal takes on a slight variation of that same sound and is probably the closest to Trissino鈥檚 original phonetic interpretation. And, coming full circle, the 闯听sound you hear in the word 鈥渉allelujah鈥� is pronounced 鈥渉alleluyah.鈥�
