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Why so much variation in the letter "j"? | ||
Tags: Alphabets | Pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6218 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 1 of 20 18 August 2012 at 7:15am | IP Logged |
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This post is made from an English perspective.
In Spanish it's an H. In German it's a Y. In French it's a Zh kinda thing (Portuguese, too?) In English it's a J. Why is there so much variation? Compare to other letters, which are pretty much always the same. What makes J so special that it gets pronounced differently in different languages? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4553 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 2 of 20 18 August 2012 at 9:14am | IP Logged |
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J was originally just an alternative form of I. At some point they became separate letters - I for the Latin I vowel (i/ee in English) and J for the Latin I consonant (consonantal y in English). The thing is that when the Romance languages started to diverge the consonantal J sound shifted to different sounds in the various languages. IIRC it was [dʒ] in Old French (the English J sound) and [ʒ] in Old Spanish and Portuguese (the zh sound). Then it further changed to [x] (the harsh h sound) in Spanish and to [ʒ] in French. English borrowed the usage of J from Old French, but it didn't go through the same phonetic change, so it retained the older pronunciation. German (and, AFAIK, most European non-Romance languages) just use the original Latin pronunciation.
Edit: It's also interesting to note how the letter R has about as much variation in its pronuncations, if not more, and yet all those pronunciations are perceived as equivalent (at least as far as European languages are concerned). Edited by vonPeterhof on 18 August 2012 at 9:22am 16 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4488 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3 of 20 18 August 2012 at 9:19am | IP Logged |
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Yeah, Dutch and Swedish retain it.
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6378 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 4 of 20 18 August 2012 at 9:41am | IP Logged |
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So does Finnish. Indonesian uses it the English way, btw.
Nice to see you refer to the Spanish sound as h. to me the English/Scandinavian/Finnish h is as similar to the German ch/Spanish j/Russian x as much as the Slavic hard and soft consonants are similar to each other. It's variation, not entirely different sounds!!! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5348 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 5 of 20 18 August 2012 at 12:43pm | IP Logged |
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Even within Spanish, you find a variety of sounds for J, ranging between a soft /h/ sound like English H, to the hard guttural /χ/ sound as in German "naCH", depending on the dialect of the speaker. Edited by Levi on 18 August 2012 at 12:44pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6378 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 6 of 20 18 August 2012 at 12:49pm | IP Logged |
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Also, the English sound for J isn't as..significant in many languages. It may be less common or barely present. Especially then, it makes sense to use it for a sound which is more common in a given language. The Latin alphabet is just used for plenty of various languages.
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| ReQuest Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4813 days ago 200 posts - 228 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 20 18 August 2012 at 4:29pm | IP Logged |
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Indonesian used to write Jakarta as Djakarta. (due to us, the Dutch).
But to make Indonesian and Malasian spelling more similar, and I guess to "dedutchify" spelling, they changed it. Edited by ReQuest on 18 August 2012 at 4:30pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Pisces Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4403 days ago 143 posts - 284 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish*, French, SwedishC1, Esperanto Studies: German, Spanish, Russian | Message 8 of 20 20 August 2012 at 4:13pm | IP Logged |
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J was originally a variant of I (obvious if you look at it). "I"/"Y" easily become "J" sounds, for example in the English "soldier" or in phrases like "did you". There's a joke in a Woody Allen movie about the latter: the Woody Allen character is paranoid and thinks someone is saying "did Jew" instead of "did you".
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