I

Ninth letter of the English alphabet, deriving, in form, from the sign for one of the several breathings of the Semitic languages. Its vocalic value was first given by the Greeks, who called it iota (Ι, ι).

In English it can be pronounced as in ‘time’ and ‘life’ (a diphthong); or as in ‘sit’ (a front unrounded close monophthong). Other, less common, pronunciations are seen in, for example, ‘police’ and ‘nation’. In Semitic languages it was called yodh. In the North Semitic alphabets and in early Greek it resembled a Z; later the symbol was straightened. In Hebrew, the symbol came to be written with a very small sign, hence the words jot and jottings, meaning little notes. In early medieval Latin i was first written with a dot, for the sake of distinguishing it from other letters. In the Semitic alphabets, which were and still are consonantal scripts, and in Latin, it sounded like the y in ‘yet’, but in Greek and its descendants it was a vowel sound.