Disputatio:J

Can we please have a ruling on the correct use of the letter J on this Wiki? There are these cases when using J would be useful:-

(1) There are a few cases when i/j is the only distinction between two words, e.g. Troia (3 syllables) = "Trojan woman" and Troja (2 syllables) = "Troy".

(2) In many styles of writing, including particularly Wikipedia's usual sans-serif typing, uppercase "eye" is the same as lowercase "ell", and that is why in Iehovah I changed the name Iahu into Jahu (and someone changed it back). This confusion did not arise in classical Roman times, because they did not use two cases of letters as we use them now. This confusion did arise in mediaeval times, and that is why J gradually arose as a handwriting variation of I ("eye"), and Y was often used instead of I, and in England a letter called yogh which looks like a 3 also developed as a handwriting variant of G and was used for the y sound.

W and V gradually arose as handwriting variations of U, and in Anglo-Saxon England the wynn rune was used in Roman alphabet handwriting as W.

The matter was complicated by the sound of Y as in "yet" changing into DZH as in "jet", and the sound of W changing to V, in the western Roman Empire between 1 AD and 400 AD, and the usual pronunciation of Latin followed.

In Religio Islamica someone spelt the Hajj pilgrimage as "Haia", and I changed it to "Hajj". The Arabic sound J was never pronounced as I ("eye"), and if Julius Caesar or Cicero came across the DZH sound in a foreign name, he would have likely written it as Z. E.g. in later Roman times someone complained that "Itali dicunt "ozie" pro "hodie".". Anthony Appleyard 07:32, 22 Martii 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the only place where 'j' is acceptable is in foreign words/names that have not been translated. For individual points: 1) There are many more cases where a long vowel creates a different word from a short one, but that is still no case for marking long and short vowels; similarly, a few cases of i/j isn't convincing here. Latin is not the property of this Wikipedia and we are not here to invent rules for it. I believe the orthography stems from ecclesiastical pronunciation (which, I think, would write Troïa for the trisyllable, if disambiguation were necessary). 2) I don't get Wikipedia in sans-serif, so I can't speak entirely to that (though I believe in sans-serif fonts, l is generally taller and/or thinner than I—in Arial for example, the space around capital i is much wider than around l.) 3) For ‘haia’, unless they had evidence of that word being used in Latin texts, I would be inclined to revert it to ‘hajj’ myself. One part of "no original research" is to not invent words for the sake of inventing words—we describe things with words that exist, and if there aren't any, it may be better to use the original foreign word in such cases. —Myces Tiberinus 12:22, 22 Martii 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hadn't seen this discussion before. In general I'm sure Myces is right, and Anthony Appleyard's change of haia to hajj agrees with our current practice: assuming no Latin source, we don't make up transliterations, we follow the nearest thing to a standard international transliteration.

There are a few cases in which a modern standard scientific Latin term (e.g. in botany or zoology) has a j, and in those cases we would follow the scientific standard: real modern users of Latin are good sources. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:37, 30 Novembris 2018 (UTC)[reply]

J is used for the consonantal I in latin before vowel in word-initial position (jus law / ieram I had gone), stem-initial (objectus object / factio faction) as well as some others where I belong to the next syllable (major / Gaius). 170.64.205.7 00:34, 16 Martii 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I was kind of waiting for this discussion to emerge (but maybe it is a discussion for our Taberna?). I am strongly in favour of using the letter [j] for the semivowel sound (e.g. “jus” instead of “ius”). The reasons are the following:

Both the sounds /w/ and /j/ are perfectly classical Latin
I believe the most widespread standard for Latin nowadays is to use [u] and [i] to represent /w/ and /j/ respectively. In the past [v] and [j] were used more often. Currently Vicipaedia uses [v] and [i], but this looks very incoherent to me, because both [v] and [j] are equally modern, and there is no reason to allow [v] without allowing [j].
The origin of [j] is actually very ancient (see I longa), but the sign did not have a fixed meaning, and in most cases was used to indicate a long ī.
The origin of [v] instead is totally modern. The attempt to represent the sound /w/ however is ancient too (see Claudian letters).
Claudian letters also show that the Romans themselves felt the need to be more accurate in representing the sounds of their language compared to what their alphabet would let them express at the time
I quite agree with Luke Ranieri's arguments in Why you should write J in Latin.

I know that it would be quite some work to rewrite all Vicipaedia using [j], but I am in favour of starting that work now instead of not acting. --Grufo (disputatio) 04:03, 16 Martii 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The inconsistencies introduced by such an act would be intolerable and must be opposed. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:29, 16 Martii 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Iacobus. It would be an unwanted diversion from our aim to make an encyclopedia in Latin. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:36, 16 Martii 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know, I guess it would depend on both how we feel about using the letter J and how slowly we want to make the change happen (by tolerating for instance the introduction of J bit by bit, without having to rewrite the entire Vicipaedia)… Well, at least I expressed how I feel about the letter J. --Grufo (disputatio) 23:58, 16 Martii 2024 (UTC)[reply]