>Nobody on Earth can agree how this letter should be pronounced
how did this happen?

Jelensly

>>24532113 (OP)
Jajajaja

>Jam can mean 3 different things if you just change the language you say it in

>>24532113 (OP)
the only wrong way is the spanish and other spic languages way

jott

>>24532164
is it an "h", "y" or "g" sound?

English y
I recently read a book on WWII and there were a fuckton of Polish-ish names and once I started pronouncing it almost like an i in English the names made way more sense

>how did this happen
renaissance-era typographic retardation
also the inability of the French from the years 500-800 to talk fucking normally, causing all their g sounds to become dž (among other things, e.g. the word "aetātem" becoming "eé" by regular sound change)

>>24532171
'G' And 'Y' are the only acceptable answers

>>24532113 (OP)
illumniautis conspiracy

The answer is sound changes. I thought this was the languge learning board, do you niggas even know anything about phonetics ?

>>24532248
Is that like Ebonics?

>>24532212
>G
Far worse than H
>hYulius Caesar
>gYulius Caesar

>>24532113 (OP)
jotO

>>24532143
It means 3 different things in English.

>this is delightful strawberry jam.
>Careful not to jam your toe on the coffee table.
>This music makes me want to jam.

>>24532113 (OP)
In Latin, it was originally just the same letter as I, but used as a consonant. Therefore, it stood for the sound that we represent as Y in English- that is, I but pronounced as a semivowel (that is, the articulation of a vowel but used as a consonant). Some other languages, like German or the Slavic languages, picked it up with this sound. Then, in late Latin it shifted to a sound like what we spell in in English today as J (because that's what it shifted to in French, and English spelling is based on medieval French spelling). This is not very surprising- they're similar sounds, some Spaniards still have trouble telling them apart. In French it shifted further to the sound of the S in "measure". Meanwhile in Spanish, you had three sets of S-like sounds- one like English SH, one like English S but pronounced slightly behind the teeth (from Latin S), and one like English S but pronounced on the teeth (from Latin C). This was a very finicky set of distinctions to make, so the SH-like one, along with the J-like one (which differed only in voicing, or whether your vocal cords are vibrating), moved back in the mouth to become a more H-like sound, in order to differentiate it more. (Meanwhile the one on the teeth moved further forward to between the teeth, to become the sound of English TH- and then the Latin Americans just stopped distinguishing it from S anyway.) Anyway, that's basically the shape of it, explained in layman's terms as best I'm able, if anything isn't clear please ask and I'll do my best to explain
>t. has degree in linguistics but is also a bit tipsy

>>24532113 (OP)
In hindsight, we probably shouldn't have passed down oral traditions from men with missing teeth.

>>24532894
Sound change is just a natural process in languages. If you heard how Shakespeare pronounced his own words he'd sound like he had a really funky accent, even relative to an educated high-class British person today, because the generational transmission of language is inevitably slightly inexact. Even if every generation speaks almost exactly the same as the last one, over time tiny changes add up until you have an entirely different language.

>>24532751
Lmao my esl ass pronounce all of those same

>>24532909
Everyone pronounces them the same, but they have different meanings.

my first name is Justin and my last name has a g in it and everyone pronounces it like a J, it aggravates me. I think its because my city is full of Italians who can't pronounce Gs correctly.

>>24532113 (OP)
it's just the letter "i" but with more speech impediment

>>24532881
yes but why the letter J shifted while all other letters are phonetically pronounced the same? What made everyone sperg out over only this one letter in the alphabet? If the letter H and Y existed why don't Spanish use those for their intended purpose and stop saying things like "jajajajaja"

>>24533358
>yes but why the letter J shifted while all other letters are phonetically pronounced the same?
The Romance languages experienced other sound changes than that in the process of evolving from Latin. For example, V originally stood for what we write in modern English as W, as you might guess by the fact that U and V were originally the same letter.
>What made everyone sperg out over only this one letter in the alphabet?
I don't think it's that unique. For example, C is always a K sound in the Celtic languages, in the Slavic languages it's always a TS sound (which comes from the sound it shifted to before I and E in late Latin), and in English and most Romance languages it's a K sound before A, O, and U, and an S, TS, or CH sound before E and I. (Because in late Latin it shifted to TS before the vowels pronounced at the front of the mouth- probably at some point in between it had a sound like Hungarian TY, with the tongue fully obstructing the air but in the place you'd put it to make a Y sound.)
>If the letter H and Y existed why don't Spanish use those for their intended purpose
As for H: Because the H sound had completely dropped in late Latin, so to Romance speakers it had no sound. (Also, Spanish J isn't exactly an H sound, it's like the CH in Bach or loch.)
As for Y: It's funny you should say "intended purpose", because originally the letter Y didn't exist in Latin, it was borrowed from the Greek alphabet, its purpose being to write a Greek vowel sound that Latin didn't have (something like modern German Ü or modern French U). The reason that Romance speakers repurposed it to write the sound it now writes is because, consonantal I (i.e. J) having shifted to make the sound that J makes today, they needed another letter to write semivowel I. Since the Greek Y vowel sound was only ever really present in educated Roman speech, for Romance speakers it just stood for the same sound as I, but wasn't associated with a J sound when used as a consonant, so they used it to write the semivowel sound.
>and stop saying things like "jajajajaja"
And why should they? They say it that way because that's the natural outcome of that sound in their language. Are you going to complain that English uses its vowel letters funny relative to other languages now, too? (Which is because of the Great Vowel Shift.)

>>24532910
not true

>>24533501
Are you saying you pronounce those three senses differently? How so?

>>24533504
dont even know why i lied there

Jej unironically

OK /lit/, which one of you bent the i...