I is the ninth letter of the Latin alphabet. Its English name is i (). History In Semitic, the letter Yôdh was probably originally a pictogram for an arm with hand, derived from a similar hieroglyph that had the value of a voiced pharyngeal fricative () in Egyptian, but was reassigned to (as in English "yoke") by Semites, because their word for "arm" began with that sound. This letter could also be used for the vowel sound , mainly in foreign words. The Greeks adopted a form of this Phoenician yodh as their letter iota (?, ?). It stood for the vowel , the same as in the Old Italic alphabet. In Latin (as in Modern Greek), it was also used for the consonant sound of . The modern letter J was originally a variation of this letter, and both were interchangeably used for both the vowel and the consonant, only coming to be differentiated in the 16th century.

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