Dotted and dotless I

The Turkish alphabet, which is a variant of the Latin alphabet, includes two distinct versions of the letter I, one dotted and the other dotless. The difference between the two versions is modelled after the letters Ö and Ü, which were taken from German. These two letters represent front-vowel variants of the letters O and U, which are back vowels. The Turkish alphabet extends this usage to I as well, creating a version with a dot to represent a front vowel, and a version without a dot to represent a back vowel:

The undotted I, I ı, denotes the close back unrounded vowel sound (/ɯ/). Neither the upper nor the lower case version has a dot.

The dotted I, İ i, denotes the close front unrounded vowel sound (/i/). Both the upper and lower case versions have a dot.

Examples:

• İstanbul /isˈtanbuɫ/ (starts with an i sound, not an ı).
• Diyarbakır /dijaɾˈbakɯɾ/ (the first and last vowels are spelled and pronounced differently)

In contrast, the Turkish alphabet uses the letter "j" (pronounced /ʒ/) the same way as in other Latin scripts, with the tittle only on the lower case character: J j.

Contents 1 Consequence for ligatures 2 In computing 3 Usage in other languages 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References

Consequence for ligatures

In some fonts, if the lower-case letters "fi" are placed adjacently, the dot-like upper end of the "f" would fall inconveniently close to the dot of the "i", and therefore a ligature glyph is provided with the top of the "f" extended to serve as the dot of the "i". A similar ligature for "ffi" is also possible. Since the unligatured forms are unattractive and the ligatures make the "i" dotless, such fonts are not appropriate for setting Turkish. However, the fi ligatures of some fonts do not merge the letters and instead space them next to each other, with the dot on the i remaining. Such fonts are appropriate for Turkish, but the writer must be careful to be consistent in the use of ligatures.

In computing

In Unicode, U+0131 is a lower case letter dotless i (ı). U+0130 (İ) is capital i with dot. ISO-8859-9 has them at positions 0xDD and 0xFD respectively. In normal typography, when lower case i is combined with other diacritics, the dot is generally removed before the diacritic is added; however, Unicode still lists the equivalent combining sequences as including the dotted i, since logically it is the normal dotted i character that is being modified.

Most Unicode software uppercases ı to I and lowercases İ to i, but, unless specifically set up for Turkish, it lowercases I to i and uppercases i to I. Thus uppercasing then lowercasing, or vice versa, changes the letters.

In the Microsoft Windows SDK, beginning with Windows Vista, several relevant functions have a NORM_LINGUISTIC_CASING flag, to indicate that for Turkish and Azerbaijani locales, I should map to ı and i to İ.

In the LaTeX typesetting language the dotless i can be written with the backslash-i command: \i. The İ can be written using the normal accenting method (i.e. \.{I}).

Dotless i (and dotted capital I) is handled problematically in the Turkish locales of several software packages, including Oracle DBMS, Java,^[1] and Unixware 7, where implicit capitalization of names of keywords, variables, and tables has effects not foreseen by the application developers. The C or US English locales do not have these problems.

Many cellphones available in Turkey (as of 2008) lack a proper localization, which leads to replacing “ı” by “i” in SMS, sometimes severely distorting the sense of a text. In one instance, a miscommunication led to the deaths of Emine and Ramazan Çalçoban in 2008.^[2] A common substitution is to use the character 1 for dotless ı.

Usage in other languages

Dotted and dotless "i" are used in several other writing systems for Turkic languages:

• Azerbaijani: The Azerbaijani Latin alphabet used in Azerbaijan is modeled after Turkish since 1991.
• Kazakh: The Kazakh alphabet as used in Kazakhstan is Cyrillic; however, several Romanization schemes exist. Dotted and dotless I, in addition to I with diaraesis (Ï) are employed in the Latin script versions of the Kazakh Wikipedia and of several governmental websites. The main website of the government of Kazakhstan^[3] and the national information agency KazInform-QazAqparat^[4] offer Turkish-like Latin script along with official Cyrillic one.
• Tatar: The Tatar alphabet in Russia is officially Cyrillic due to the requirements of Russian federal law. Several Romanization schemes exist, which are often used on the Internet and some printed publication. Most of them are modelled in different ways on Turkish and employ dotted and dotless I, while some also use I with acute (Í), although for different phonemes.
• Crimean Tatar: The Latin alphabet is officially used for the Crimean Tatar language and does use both dotted and dotless I letters. Cyrillic script is still used in daily life in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, but is not the official script for the language.
• In Irish, see Tittle.

See also

• Tittle: the dot above "i" and "j" in most of the Latin scripts
• Yery (ы) — a letter used to represent [ɯ] in Turkic languages with Cyrillic script, and the similar [ɨ] in Russian.

Notes

1. ^ Turkish Java needs special brewing
2. ^ A cellphone's missing dot kills two people, puts three more in jail
3. ^ Government of Kazakhstan (Kazakh Cyrillic/Latin)
4. ^ KazInform (Kazakh Cyrillic/Latin)

References

• http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0100.pdf
• Tex Texin, Internationalization for Turkish: Dotted and Dotless Letter "I", accessed 15 Nov 2005

Aa	Bb	Cc	Dd	Ee	Ff	Gg	Hh	Ii	Jj	Kk	Ll	Mm	Nn	Oo	Pp	Qq	Rr	Ss	Tt	Uu	Vv	Ww	Xx	Yy	Zz
Letter I with diacritics
Í í	Ì ì	Ĭ ĭ	Î î	Ǐ ǐ	Ïï	Ḯḯ	Ĩĩ	Į į	Ī ī	Ỉ ỉ	Ȉ ȉ	Ȋ ȋ	Ị ị	Ḭ ḭ	Ɨ ɨ	ᵻ	ᶖ	İ i	I ı
Letters using dot above sign ( ◌̇ )
Ȧȧ	Ḃḃ	Ċċ	Ḋḋ	Ėė	Ḟḟ	Ġġ	Ḣḣ	İ ı	Ṁṁ	Ṅṅ	Ȯȯ	Ṗṗ	Ṙṙ	Ṡṡẛ	Ṫṫ	Ẇẇ	Ẋẋ	Ẏẏ	Żż
Letters using dot below sign ( ◌̣ )
Ạạ	Ḅḅ	Ḍḍ	Ẹẹ	Ḥḥ	Ị ị	Ḳḳ	Ḷḷ	Ṃṃ	Ṇṇ	Ọọ	Ṛṛ	Ṣṣ	Ṭṭ	Ụụ	Ṿṿ	Ẉẉ	Ỵỵ	Ẓẓ
Related
History Palaeography Derivations Diacritics Punctuation Numerals Unicode List of letters ISO/IEC 646