İ

I with dot above
İ i
Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	alphabetic
Language of origin	Turkish language
Phonetic usage	[i] [j] [ɪj] [əj]
Unicode codepoint	U+0130, U+0069
History
Development	Ιι 𐌉 I i İ i
Time period	1928 to present
Sisters	I ı
Other
Writing direction	Left-to-Right
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

İ, or i, called dotted I or i-dot, is a letter used in the Latin-script alphabets of Azerbaijani, Crimean Tatar, Gagauz, Kazakh, Tatar, and Turkish. It commonly represents the close front unrounded vowel /i/ except in Kazakh in which it additionally represents the voiced palatal approximant /j/ and the diphthongs /ɪj/ and /əj/. All languages that use it use also its dotless counterpart I but not the basic Latin letter I.

In computing

The dotted I is encoded into Unicode with the code point U+0130 (U+0069 for the lowercase letter) as part of the Latin Extended-A block.^[1]

Issues

The dotted and dotless I characters have caused issues in computing. Languages like Turkish have four variants of the letter I (opposed to two in English). This causes problems when, instead of the original mapping of i to I, Turkish maps i to the new İ, and ı to I, frequently breaking software logic.^[2]

Usage in other languages

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".

See also

• Dotless I, the letter's dotless counterpart
• Tittle – Diacritical mark, the dot element of the letters i and j

References

This page was last edited on 21 February 2024, at 14:57