A red letter day for the ‘J’

QUESTION What was the last letter added to the alphabet? The letter ‘J’, adopted in the 16th century, was the last letter added to our alphabet.

Classical Latin did not have a ‘J’ sound; it used ‘I’ to represent a vowel sound (as in machine) and a consonant (as in yellow).

Latin names such as Julius or Jesus were pronounced Yoolius and Yeisus.

In the Roman/Latin alphabet, the english alphabet’s predecessor, ‘j’ wasn’t a letter, but a swash, a typographical flourish added to the letter ‘I’.

With the introduction of lowercase letters to the Roman numeric system, it was used to denote the conclusion of a series of ones, as in ‘xxiij’ instead of ‘xxiii’ for the number 23.

By the 1500s, speakers of the Romance languages (Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese) noted the confusion that resulted from the use of ‘i’ as a vowel and consonant. In 1524, Gian Giorgio Trissino, an Italian Renaissance grammarian, recommended the Roman swash ‘j’ be used as a consonant in its own right.

So, ‘i’ became the vowel and ‘j’ became a consonant.

Edward Woodridge, Oxford. QUESTION Did a real bear called Jeremy advertise Sugar Puffs? FuRTheR to the earlier answer, Chelsea FC supporters were fans of Jeremy the Bear and he was the subject of a chant sung to the tune of the Teddy Bear’s Picnic:

‘If you go down to the Shed today/You’ll never believe your eyes./ For Jeremy, the Sugar Puffs bear/ has bought some boots and cropped his hair,/ Today’s the day that Jeremy joined the skinheads!’

Thomas Gray, London SW6.