1. Development of I I was a consonant in the Semitic alphabet. I was a vowel in the Greek. I was a vowel and consonant (y) in Latin.

2. The strong showing of I: One of the five main vowel letters. Its place in the verb “is”. Its place in the “-ing” ending of English participles and gerunds. Its combinations with other vowels, especially E. Examples: varied, sieve, dried, friend, rein, receive, height.

3. The “ee” pronunciation of long I It dates back to the ancient European tongues of Greek, Etruscan, and Latin. The medieval English long I was pronounced closer to “ee”. The word “life” spelled lif would have sounded like “leaf”.

4. Distinctive Features Its shape: it is the skinniest and simplest of the letters. The Phoenician yod had been copied into the newly created Hebrew alphabet. Today the tenth Hebrew letter is still called yod and takes the sound “y”.

5. I i Capital lower case with dot The medieval i originally had no dot but the dot was added during the middle ages to distinguish the i on a crowded page of handwriting.

6. The I has two ranges of sound values : 1)Short like (big) 2)Long like (find) M.E Chaucer Shakespeare I [fi.f] five [faiv] In chaucer’s pronunciation the I was pronounced as i in (king) but in the 15 th century there has been a change. The long vowels were pronounced by elevation of the tongue and closing the mouth, but the i could not be raised without becoming consonantal i. Therefore, the i broke into the diphthong ai.

7. There has been a time when i and y were interchangeable. This fact is noticed by the variation of US and UK i and y. Tire = US Tyre = UK This interchangeability is not new but has to do with OE and ME King = OE Kyng = ME The y is used as an alternative to i so that ME king and kyng represent exactly the same pronunciation as do ME fir and fyr “fire”.

8. “I” meaning “me” It emerged in English around 1150 from an old English pronoun ic, related to the modern German pronoun ich (meaning “I”). The English pronoun “I”, shifting in pronunciation from “ee” to our long I sound, could be written as “i,” “y,”or “Y.” With the spread of printing in the 1500s, it settled down as “I”.