Talk:y

Pronunciation
Is "y" pronounced /ʍaɪ/ or /waɪ/? Depending on how "y" is pronounced and whether or not one is in a region with wine-whine merger, it may or may not be homophonic with "why". The why article also makes this distinction. -- Telofy 06:57, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It's pronounced /waɪ/. This is homophonous with "why" only in accents with the wine-whine merger; in accents without it, "why" is /ʍaɪ/. But "y" is /waɪ/ in both kinds of accents. Angr 19:34, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

RFV discussion


The homophones include "WI" and "WY", presumably the abbreviations for Wisconsin and Wyoming, respectively, as I can attest that "WI" meaning "Women's Institute" is pronounced "double-you eye". Surely these are not homophones of "y", or else how would you be able to distinguish between them? Further, "NY" is pronounced "en why", isn't it, not "nye"? Aren't all two-letter abbreviations of US states pronounced either letter by letter or in the same way as the full form? &mdash; Paul G 15:15, 23 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I've not heard either pronounced as "y". I have heard "Wisc." pronounced as a homophone of "whisk" and so on for some of the older state abbreviations (Mass., Miss., Wash., Cal., Mo.; don't know about others). I agree that the prevailing pronunciations of the two-letter postal abbreviations in the US are as you say. DCDuring TALK 17:03, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Removed the two homophones. Striking. &#x200b;— msh210  ℠  18:13, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

French pronunciation
Is there any reference or basis for the pronunciation of the French contraction of "il" being pronounced /iː/ as opposed to the other meanings being pronounced /i/? According to Appendix:French pronunciation we don't have any length distinction in French vowels, and I also wouldn't know any such distinction. Also being French, I don't see how that sense of "y" would include a longer vowel. Any ideas? –Jérôme (talk) 15:11, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't remember why I thought it was long when I added that pronunciation. But don't forget that there are still dialects of French that do have a length distinction, and Quebec is one of them (although the length manifests itself as diphthongization), but in that case /i/ in Quebec would always be analyzed as long as opposed to the short /ɪ/. --WikiTiki89 16:01, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
 * For Québécois, I would propose to document on Appendix:French pronunciation how the pronunciation works. As far as I understand, Québécois has a historical length distinction for /ɛ/, but the distinctions /i~ɪ, u~ʊ, y~ʏ/ are later developments depending on surrounding consonants.  I propose that Québecois pronunciations can be specified in addition to the main pronunciation, but the main pronunciation should definitely use only phonemes from Appendix:French pronunciation, which can of course be changed if necessary.  Let me remove the length mark now then.–Jérôme (talk) 09:20, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Spnaish conjunction y: tonic vs atonic
The first basic distinction to do regards its tonicity --Backinstadiums (talk) 15:39, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Spanish arithmetic
How do Spanish speakers know if, for example, ochenta menos setenta y seis means 80 - 76 = 4 or 80 - 70 + 6 = 16? Is this information the y page should include (maybe as a usage note)? --96.244.220.178 00:02, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

From the name of the letter i
jy reads "From the name of the letter i (of which j was originally a variant) by affixing the /d͡ʒ/ sound to it)" --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:51, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Noun (abbreviation)
What is the plural of the English nominal meanings (abbreviations)? --Backinstadiums (talk) 09:13, 3 May 2021 (UTC)