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The letter J is the tenth of the Latin alphabet; it was the last to be added to that alphabet. Its name in English is jay. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, [j] represents the palatal approximant. It is also the only letter not to appear in the Periodic Table. On keyboards, the F and J keys generally have a raised bar (perceptible to the touch) over them to assist in touch typing. All other keys can be found with their relative positions around these two keys as the index finger is generally used to type the F and the J.
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J was originally a capital of I.
Petrus Ramus (d. 1572) was the first to make a distinction between I and J. Originally, both I and J were pronounced (see IPA) as [i], [i:], and [j]; but Romance languages developed new sounds (from former [j] and [g]) that came to be represented as I and J; therefore, English J (from French J) has a sound quite different from I.
In other Germanic languages J stands for [j]. This is also true of Slavic languages that use the Latin alphabet as well as in Hungarian, Albanian, and Finnish, where it can never be a fricative.
In modern standard Italian only foreign or Latin words have J. Until the 19th century, J was used instead of I in diphthongs, as a replacement for final -ii, or in vowels groups (as in Savoja); this rule was quite strict for official writing. J is also used for rendering words in dialect, where it stands for [j], e.g. Romanesque ajo for standard aglio (garlic). The Italian Novelist Luigi Pirandello utilised J in vowels group in his works.
In Spanish J stands for [x ~ h] (which in some cases developed from the [dʒ] sound, i.e. the same sound that English still represents orthographically by <j>). In French former dʒ is now pronounced as [ʒ] (as in English measure).
In Portuguese, Turkish, Azeri and Tatar J is always prounced [ʒ].
Hebrew also influenced the English J, which in a few cases is used for [j] in place of the more normal Y. The classic example is Hallelujah which is pronounced the same as Halleluyah. See the Hebrew yod for more details.
Juliet or Juliett represents the letter J in the NATO phonetic alphabet.
In international Morse code the letter J is DitDahDahDah: · - - -
In Braille the letter J is represented as ⠚ (in Unicode), the dot pattern,
.X XX ..
J can also refer to:
j can also refer to:
), in fields such as physics and electrical engineering where i is traditionally used to denote a changing current)
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