this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
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GUIDE: Special latin characters within Europe (files.catbox.moe)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm Italian and I've never in my life seen "î", I wouldn't even know how to read it

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

According to German Wikipedia it is old spelling and thus, no wonder you didn't come across it:

In Italian, the circumflex used to be used primarily in the pluralisation of words with a final -io to mark the coincidence of two -ii: il principio "the principle" → i principî, in contrast to i principi, the plural of il principe "the prince". In addition to principî, there was also the full spelling principii, which was not pronounced correctly. Today, the words for "principles" and "princes" are spelt principi without distinction.

(translated using DeepL)

According to the English article, it is also used in Emilian and Friulian, both indicate a long vovel with a circumflex.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

But I have come across other old spellings, like "j" used in diphthongs in place of "i", like in "jeri" (old spelling for "ieri", "yesterday") or in "naja" (old word for compulsory military service time). So it must be even older/rarer than that, and I would still say "j" it's not an Italian letter because nobody uses it exept to write "Jesolo" but that's a name, not a regular word.

Fun fact: because of the old usage of "j" some text to speech are "broken". The one on railway speakers always reads "RailJet" as "Railiet" which sounds funny.