IJ (digraph)
IJ (lowercase ij; ; also encountered as deprecated codepoints 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 . In standard Dutch and most Dutch dialects, there are two possible spellings for the diphthong : ''ij'' and ''ei''. That causes confusion for school children, who need to learn which words to write with ''ei'' and which with ''ij''. To distinguish between the two, the ''ij'' is referred to as the ("long ''ij''"), the ''ei'' as ("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 ''ij'' is maintaine ...
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