When I was reviewing the Turkish alphabet and the letters with diacritics, I noticed that the English alphabet does not use diacritics most of the time. The only exceptions are the lowercase letters i and j. This begs the question "Why does the lower letter i (or j) has a dot?". After all it should have been easier to write and more consistent with the rest of the alphabet if it did not have a dot.
The dot on the lower letter i or j is called the tittle. Wikipedia says the following about it.
Tittle
The tittle first appeared in Latin manuscripts in the 11th century, to distinguish the letter i from strokes of nearby letters. Although originally a larger mark, it was reduced to a dot when Roman-style typefaces were introduced.Blackletter / Gothic script / Textualis
Minims, especially in the later period of the script, do not connect with each other. This makes it very difficult to distinguish i, u, m, and n. A 14th-century example of the difficulty minims produced is, mimi numinum niuium minimi munium nimium uini muniminum imminui uiui minimum uolunt ("the smallest mimes of the gods of snow do not wish at all in their life that the great duty of the defences of the wine be diminished"). In black letter this would look like a series of single strokes. Dotted i and the letter j developed because of this.
The dates do not match in the articles. However 14th century seems to be the correct one to me, considering that the Gothic script started mid 12 century and the earlier forms of the minuscule (lower case) scripts (Half-Uncial, Carolingian) do not write the letter i with a dot.
On top of all this the dot seems to add more body to this smallest member of the alphabet to make it easier to read.
Here is a summary
- Early Latin alphabet did not have lowercase. Letter I was written without a dot.
- Lower case (minuscule) letters appeared after 8th century. Early forms like the Carolingian script continued to write the letter i without a dot.
- Textualis a form of Gothic script started using the dot in lower case letter i to distinguish it from strokes of letters u, m, and n.
- The letter j was added to the alphabet as a variation of the letter i. As such it followed the evolution of the letter i.
- Turkish brought us full circle back by removing the dot from the letter i.
See also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tittle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_case
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackletter
Read Part 1, Part 3
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