I
I Ninth letter of the Roman-based w European alphabet, derived from the Semitic letter yod, meaning hand. It passed through Phoenician unchanged to the Greeks, who called it iota. In the Roman alphabet it was pronounced like ee in English keen, keep. The letter has two basic pronunciations in English: “short” i, as in bit, and “long” i (a diphthong), as in wide. I has a different sound in some words (such as police and first) and is pronounced like a consonantal y in words such as union and onion.
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