Î

Î, î (i-circumflex) is a letter in the Friulian, Kurdish, and Romanian alphabets. This letter also appears in French, Turkish, Italian, Welsh and Walloon languages as a variant of letter “i”.

Usage in various languages

Afrikaans

In Afrikaans, î is a punctuated form of i and a usage example includes "wîe", plural of "wig" (= wedge).

Friulian

Î is used to represent the /iː/ sound.

Kurdish

Î is the 12th letter of the Kurdish Kurmanji alphabet and represents /iː/.

Romanian

Î is the 12th letter of the Romanian alphabet and represents /ɨ/. This sound is also represented in Romanian as letter â. The difference between the two is that â is used in the middle of the word, as in "România", while î is used at the ends: "înțelegere" (understanding), "a urî" (to hate). A compound word starting or ending with the letter î will retain it, even if it goes in the middle of the word: "neînțelegere" (mis-understanding)

Italian

Î is a variant of I in Italian. It should be used when forming the plural of male nouns ending in "-io", to avoid placing the stress on the wrong syllable. Example: "principio" /prinˈtʃipjo/ (principle) has the plural "principî" /prinˈtʃipi/, while "principe" /ˈprintʃipe/ (prince) has "principi" /ˈprintʃipi/ as plural. However, the usage of Î in Italian is rapidly decreasing; most Italians write "principi" for the plurals of both "principio" and "principe".

French

Î is a letter which appears in several French words, like naître (to be born), abîme (abyss), maître (master), (crème) fraîche and more. Unlike Â, Ê, and Ô, the circumflex does not alter the pronunciation of î, nor does it alter û.

The circumflex usually denotes the exclusion of a letter (usually s) that was in a prior version of the word:

• voster became vôtre.
• abismus became abisme and then abîme.
• magister became maistre and then maître.

Turkish

In Turkish, î is used to indicate the /iː/ sound in Arabic loanwords where it is used as an adjectival suffix that makes an adjective from a noun.

Welsh

In Welsh, î is used to represent long stressed i [iː] when, without the circumflex, the vowel would be pronounced as short [ɪ], e.g. dîm [diːm] mutated form of "team", as opposed to dim [dɪm] "no, nought, nothing".

Other usage

In mathematics

• The letter is sometimes used to denote a unit vector in mathematics.

Character mappings

See also

• Circumflex
• ^I