So, did the letter “y” form out of the letters “ij”?
Evidence:
- they would both sound “eeyy”
- in “free”, “ee” might be English substitute for “y”
- in “free”, “ij” might be English substitute for “ij”
- “ÿ” can look exactly like “ij” in cursive
It took me slightly too long to find out why everything around here is labelled “IJ”, but this is an unrelated discovery that also supports my theory about “Y”.
So, “IJ” is a diphthong — capitalised together therefore, and can have its own #unicode digraph — but the equivalence with “Y” existed until 1804 and has been deprecated since.
Christian Kent