Development Of The "I"

This is a post about the development of the letter "I".

The English alphabet has 26 letters. The first letter, A, was taken from Phoenician. B was taken from Etruscan. C was copied from Greek letters in use at that time. D is a Roman adaptation of Semitic scripts. And so on, until we get to I which comes originally from the Greek letter Ɛ.

It's impossible to tell when Ɛ first came into use and there are some suggestions that it could have been as early as 900 BC but not much earlier than 500 BC or later than 200 AD...for comparison... A was created between 1700 BC and 1200 BC, B around 1400 BC, and C in the 8th century BC. The sound represented by the letter "I" has existed much longer than Ɛ, of course. The use of this sound to represent a single letter first appeared during the 14th century AD.

Like many letters, "I" originally had a completely different shape when compared to its modern form but its evolution was slow enough that people eventually settled upon the current form which we all know. I can't tell you why exactly our ancestors settled upon this form rather than any other but you can learn a little more about it here if you're interested: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=i

The letter "I" is extremely important in English and especially in the modern English alphabet where it is the first letter and most often used letter of all. However, despite its importance, it took a long time for this letter to be recognized as "I". In fact, some of you may be surprised to learn that during the long period when Old English flourished across Britain, there was no single letter "I" in use at all! Instead, there was just a wavy line that served as a substitute for this sound. Yes, really.

The use of the letter "I" has changed a lot over time and it is important to know about its development so you can see how it developed into what it is today. Here are a few examples of the changes that took place over the last few centuries:

17th Century: "I" was used to represent both sounds, as in the word "abit". All those who knew Latin were well aware that this was an error so they changed their spelling accordingly. This process was quite slow and only started to pick up speed in the 18th century. It wasn't until the 19th century that "I" became commonly used to refer only to its present pronunciation.

17th Century: "Ie" was used to represent the sound as in the word "hid". Today, we use "ei" to refer to this sound. This is confusing, I know...

18th Century: Words ending in "-gue" were spelled with only one "g" while words ending with "-gue" were spelled with a double "g". This ended up being quite confusing so it changed after 1800. (See this article for more info: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=g)

18th Century: The letter 'J' became a separate letter from the letter 'I'. This is easy to explain: the letter 'I' looked the same until the 14th century when it got a point at its bottom left corner. This change didn't take place until after 1600 so everyone who knew Old English was confused by this.

18th Century: In dictionaries and other books, "I" always looked like it does today while J only began to look like its current form in around 1680. In earlier times, it also looked a little different and was used as a substitute for both "Y" and "I". For example, "His Iourneye" is spelled "His Yourneye".

You can see information on the development of the letter "J" here: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=j

This should give you a better understanding of the history of this letter and will help you understand why it is so confusing sometimes. In fact, there are a few places where I still have trouble myself despite having studied Old and Middle English for years! Still, it's never too late to learn about these things so I hope this has been helpful for you no matter what your experience level with English may be!

This was a guest post from Abhirup Das who writes at http://www.learnenglishhub.com . He is a new teacher and is learning about teaching English at the same time. He writes about many different topics related to teaching English.You can read more from Abhirup here: http://www.learnenglishhub.com/tags/abhirup-das

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Development Of The "I"

Development Of The "I"

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