Dictionary of Meaning
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Y
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{{AZ|uc=Y|lc=y}}
'''Y''' is the twenty-fifth letter of the Latin
alphabet. Its name in
English language English is ''wy'', sometimes spelled ''wye''.
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
International Phonetic Alphabet 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 language 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.
By
Middle English, [y] had lost its
roundedness and become [i], and Y came to be used with the same values as I, [iː] 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 {{IPA|[ɪ]}}.
The English name of the letter, pronounced {{IPA|[waɪ]}}, is of uncertain origin.
It is possible that a former name [yː] broke in Old English to [wiː], which would regularly yield Modern English [waɪ].
With the introduction of printing, the letter Y was used by
Caxton and other printers in
England to represent the
thorn (letter) 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, 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 language Greek, representing [u] and later on, front rounded [y], becoming [i] in Modern Greek.
In
English language English morphology (linguistics) 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 language German, in
Finnish language 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 language 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 "
IJ (letter) letter IJ". In
Afrikaans language 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 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 language Spanish. It is pronounced as "EE" is in
English language English (in the IPA its sound is written [i]).
In
Spanish name 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 language Italian, too, has Y only in very few loanwords.
In contrast, in the Latin transcription of
Nenets language Nenets (''Nyenec'') the letter "y"
palatalization palatalizes the preceding consonant. The letter Y nicely shows how letters change their function.
When used as a vowel in
Vietnamese language 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.
Significance in the IPA
In the
International Phonetic Alphabet, [y] corresponds to the
close front rounded vowel, and the slightly different character [ʏ] corresponds to the
near-close near-front rounded vowel.
Codes for computing
{{Letter
|NATO=Yankee
|Morse=–·––
|B1=â—?
|B2=â—‹
|B3=â—?
|B4=â—?
|B5=â—?
|B6=â—?
}}
In
Unicode the
majuscule capital Y is codepoint U+0059 and the
minuscule lowercase y is U+0079.
The
ASCII code for capital Y is 89 and for lowercase y is 121; or in
Binary numeral system binary 01011001 and 01111001, correspondingly.
The
EBCDIC code for capital Y is 232 and for lowercase y is 168.
The
numeric character references in
HTML and
XML are "
Y" and "
y" for upper and lower case respectively.
Meanings of "Y"
* "The Y" is short for:
**the
YMCA, or sometimes, the
YWCA.
**
Brigham Young University (BYU) or the large "Y" made of stones on the mountain overlooking BYU.
* In
astronomy,
** Y stands for a December 16 through 31 discovery, in the provisional designation of a comet (e.g.
C/1823 Y1, the Great Comet of 1823) or asteroid (e.g. {{mpl|(4324) 1981 YA|1}}).
* In
biochemistry, Y is the symbol for
tyrosine.
* In
chemistry, Y is the symbol for
yttrium.
* In
color models,
** Y stands for the color
yellow in the
CMYK color model.
** Y stands for
Luminance (video) luminance in many color models used for
television broadcast, such as
YIQ and
YUV.
* In
combinatory logic, Y is the name of a well known
fixed point combinator.
* In
comic books, ''
Y: The Last Man'' is the title of a
DC comics series by
Brian K. Vaughan.
* In
command line interpreters like
4DOS,
y is a command to concatenate the output of two or more
stream (computing) streams.
* In
economics, Y is used to represent
income.
* In
electrical engineering, Y is the symbol for
admittance, the
inverse of
impedance.
* In
film, Y is the name of a
1987 Swedish film; see
Y (film).
* In
finance, Y is the U.S.
ticker symbol for
Alleghany Corporation.
* In
games, Y is the name of a modern
board game, played on a
triangle (geometry) triangle-shaped board; see
Y (game)
*In
genetics Y denotes the
Y chromosome.
** In sex, XY denotes male in the
XY sex-determination system.
* In
geography,
** Y is the name of a place in
Alaska; see
Y, Alaska.
** Y is the name of a
commune in France commune in the
Somme ''
département in France département'' of
France; see
Y, Somme.
* In
mathematics, y is the usual symbol for the variable represented on the vertical axis (
ordinate) in
analytic geometry.
* In
scheduled air transport, Y is used to refer to
economy class seating (
first class travel first class is F).
* In the
SI system,
**Y,
yotta is the
SI prefix meaning 10
24.
**y,
yocto is the
SI prefix meaning 10
-24.
* As the first letter of a
postal code,
** In
Canada, Y stands for the
Yukon.
* In
sociology, Y refers to
Generation Y.
* In
statistics and
analysis (mathematics) analysis, y commonly denotes the
dependent variable.
* In
Internet slang, Y is commonly referred to as "why" due to the similarity in pronunciation, see [http://www.yy.ag yellow why]
See also
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Category:Latin letters
als:Y
ca:Y
sn:Y
cs:Y
da:Y
de:Y
et:Y
el:Y
es:Y
eo:Y
fr:Y
gl:Y
ko:Y
it:Y
he:Y
kw:Y
la:Y
nl:Y
ja:Y
no:Y
nn:Y
pl:Y
pt:Y
ro:Y
ru:Y (буква)
simple:Y
sl:Y
fi:Y
sv:Y
tl:Y
vi:Y
yo:Y
zh:Y
Image:Yes_check.svg 15px|Yes
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