I, or ı, called dotless i, is a letter used in the Latin-script alphabets of Azerbaijani, Crimean Tatar, Gagauz, Kazakh, Tatar and Turkish. It commonly represents the

close back unrounded vowel The close back unrounded vowel, or high back unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . Typographically, it is a turned letter . ...

, except in Kazakh where it represents the near-close front unrounded vowel . All of the languages it is used in also use its dotted counterpart İ while not using the basic Latin letter I. In scholarly writing on

Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic langua ...

, ï is sometimes used for .

In computing

Usage in other languages

The dotless ''ı'' may also be used as a stylistic variant of the dotted ''i'', without there being any meaningful difference between them. This is common in older Irish orthography, for example, but is simply the omission of the

tittle The tittle or superscript dot is the dot on top of lowercase ''i'' and ''j''. In English writing the tittle is a diacritic which only appears as part of these glyphs, but diacritic dots can appear over other letters in various languages. In mos ...

rather than a separate letter. The í is a separate letter as is ì in Scottish Gaelic. Though historically Irish only used an "i" without a dot, so as to not confuse with "í", this dotless "ı" should not be used for Irish. Instead a font with "i" in the normal location should be used that has no dot. See other old-style Irish letters and the symbol for & still used in modern Irish text and

Irish orthography Irish orthography is the set of conventions used to write Irish. A spelling reform in the mid-20th century led to , the modern standard written form used by the Government of Ireland, which regulates both spelling and grammar. The reform re ...

. In some of the

Athabaskan languages Athabaskan ( ; also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large branch of the Na-Dene languages, Na-Dene language family of North America, located in western North America in three areal language ...

of the

Northwest Territories The Northwest Territories is a federal Provinces and territories of Canada, territory of Canada. At a land area of approximately and a 2021 census population of 41,070, it is the second-largest and the most populous of Provinces and territorie ...

in Canada, specifically Slavey, Dogrib and

Chipewyan The Chipewyan ( , also called ''Denésoliné'' or ''Dënesųłı̨né'' or ''Dënë Sųłınë́'', meaning "the original/real people") are a Dene group of Indigenous Canadian people belonging to the Athabaskan language family, whose ancest ...

, all instances of ''i'' are undotted to avoid confusion with tone-marked vowels ''í'' or ''ì''. Lowercase dotless ''ı'' is used as the lowercase form of the letter Í in the official Karakalpak alphabet approved in 2016. Both the dotted and dotless I can be used in transcriptions of Rusyn to allow distinguishing between the letters Ы and И, which would otherwise be both transcribed as "y", despite representing different phonemes. Under such transcription the dotted İ would represent the Cyrillic І, and the dotless I would represent either Ы or И, with the other being represented by "Y".

References

External links

Unicode chart
*Tex Texin

accessed 15 Nov 2005 {{Latin script, I, , show pairs=no Turkish language I

In computing

Usage in other languages

See also

References

External links