Talk:I

pronoun I always capitalized

Why is the pronoun I always capitalized? When did that start and why? Thanks

It was shortened from ic/ich to i by AD 1137 in northern England, and then it began to be written as a capital around AD 1250 to mark it as a distinct word and to avoid misreading in manuscripts, since little or no space was given between words in formal manuscripts of that era. —Stephen 10:33, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Bangla word for I

Can someone with a Bangla keyboard driver add the Bangla word of I? By the way, the Romanized version is "ami". Thanks in advance. Ko e aeetlrsk 01:40, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay, আমি (āmi), but it goes under capital I, not lowercase i. —Stephen 15:17, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Burmese word for I

Can someone with a Burmese keyboard driver add the Burmese word for I? The Romanzation is "nga". Thanks in advance. Ko e aeetlrsk 03:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Redirect

Why does Talk:I redirect to Talk:i? Æetlr Creejl 16:35, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

It used to, but no longer does. The reason it did is historic - originally the first letter of all entries on Wikipedia was a capital letter (as it still is on Wikipedia). Later (early 2006?) this automatic capitalisation of the first letter was turned off on all wiktionaries, apparently following a request for this to happen on the Dutch (and possibly other) language editions that was allegedly misunderstood by the developers to be a request for all Wiktionaries (I was not active on Wiktionary at the time, and have not looked into it myself, so I can only go by what I have heard from those who were). As part of the transition, all pages were moved to titles starting with lowercase (I presume the reason is that more are supposed to start with a lowercase letter than with an uppercase letter) - i.e. I and Talk:I were moved to i and Talk:i, with redirects left behind as is standard for the MediaWiki software. Where a word was meant to start with an uppercase letter, the page was manually moved back. However it seems that not all the talk pages were moved back at the same time, and these generally remain until an admin notices, or someone brings it to the attention of an admin. Thryduulf 16:24, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Etymology

Is there any agreement on the etymology here? There are two different one's listed and I've never heard of the French etymology, though it's listed first.

The first etymology is for the abbreviation (I.). The French etymology is the second one, and it is for the letter of the alphabet (the letter I). The third etymology is the Germanic first-person pronoun I. Which one are you concerned about? —Stephen 05:06, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Format

I've got a question... why do you have to go all the way down to the third etymology before you get "personal pronoun"? Shouldn't that be first? 76.104.192.194 00:09, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Why should it be first? As it is, the parts of speech are arranged in alphabetical order. --EncycloPetey 00:13, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Politeness?

I didn't see a mention of it here, and am wondering if what I was taught is incorrect:

In school, we learned that when politely speaking, it was proper to refer to the recipient(s) before one's self, as in the statement "My friends and I are going to see a movie.", is this correct? -- Cbf536 07:23, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

• Yes, but it has nothing to do with being polite. "I and my friends" just sounds wrong - and don't even think of saying "Myself and my friends are going to see a movie"! SemperBlotto 07:27, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

That's what I was thinking, but it is the subject pronoun and it's often used at the beginning of sentences where there is no accompaniment (though I suppose my friends and I would be the subject here ...). Are these rules also applied in other languages? If it's strictly English, perhaps it should be noted. I couldn't find another reason for this construction to be incorrect besides not being in widespread use. -- Cbf536 07:34, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

"I and my friends" does not sound wrong to me. Equinox ◑ 00:18, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

It should sound wrong in English (as SB notes,and isn't politeness per se). "My friends and I" or (being less correct and more informal) "me and my friends" (can be either way 'round). "Me, myself, and I!" (helpful way to remember an acceptable order ;-) for example "The participants were A, B, C, myself, and several others." (;-) Robert Ullmann 11:09, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I asked some natives what they use: According to them, Spanish uses that of English, Dutch uses the same in a polite sense (but both are feasible). Swedish uses the inverse (Jag och min kompis). It doesn't seem to be a syntactical trait of Germanic/Indo-European languages, so should it be noted for the languages which use/don't use it? -- Cbf536 00:17, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

RFD discussion: November–December 2014

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process (permalink).

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.

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I

Rfd-sense: "(computing, programming) interface (as a prefix on the name of an entity)".

Sure, the letter I is used in this way, and this sense is probably citable; but is this a "term" or lexical element that we should include in a dictionary? I don't think so. It's a slippery slope - do we want to be including all w:Hungarian notation prefixes? They're probably citable too, given the number of books written about programming, but I don't think they are "terms"... This, that and the other (talk) 10:16, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Shouldn't it be I- (or i-) for this definition, as it's a prefix? CFI says prefixes should be kept, but then it mentions "i-" specifically in the "attestation vs. slippery slope" section. However, it looks like the mention of "i-" in the slippery slope section is not referring to this prefix, but to words generated with the prefix "i-", and probably the definition pertaining to Apple products. Based on that, move and keep. Purplebackpack89 14:25, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

I would say delete because programming code words are used in programming languages and not in English. Wiktionary covers only human languages. —CodeCat 14:31, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't know, but if it's not used in English then it shouldn't be kept as English. In fact (though CFI sadly doesn't mention it) 'all words in all languages' refers to human languages not computer languages. Furthermore, it's my understanding that computer languages don't have words. Renard Migrant (talk) 17:52, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

I created this and can see why it might be deletion-worthy; the point about Hungarian prefixes is a good one, and e.g. C is also sometimes used as a class prefix. (We shifted the APL symbols to an appendix, for example, and we don't have entries for programming keywords unless they have entered English, e.g. bless, enum.) It does raise questions about the acceptability of some other programming-language items, like ++. Equinox ◑ 23:03, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Don't we have definitions for scientific or mathematical symbols, though? Compare the four definitions listed under R#Translingual. I can see how it's not quite the same thing, though. (Should we have entries for c-, k-, μ-, or other metric prefixes?) ObsequiousNewt (ἔβαζα|ἐτλέλεσα) 13:55, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I think it makes sense to treat μ and friends as symbols, not prefixes, since the things they form are not really words. Equinox ◑ 15:59, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Although μ- is a special case, since it can abbreviate "micro" in technical terms (μ-electronics, μ-scope, μmeter, μwave). The others can sometimes be used when spelling out unit names (there are plenty of kvolts and Mpixels on Google Books. I don't know whether or not they're worth having. Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:45, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

I've been known to refer to a certain company as µSoft. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:49, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

• Delete, since "I" is neither a word nor a morpheme in a language. It is an item used to form identifiers, and identifiers themselves (e.g. "JOptionPane") are not words in a language, despite often being composed from English words. If we were including attested identifiers used in programming languages as words (three independent uses in source code?), then we could be including I as an item resembling a word used in a closed compound (in natural language, "head" in "headache") or I- as a prefix.--Dan Polansky (talk) 07:47, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Sense deleted. bd2412 T 02:30, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

RFD 2

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process.

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.

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I

“The letter i with a dot above, in both the upper case and the lower case versions.”

That’s İ, not I. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 12:25, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. Speedy? — Keφr 18:18, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Speedied. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 14:27, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Delete (no objection to speedy). --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:32, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

First person nominative pronoun

@Ranníocóir: You're taller than I isn't an example of I as the complement of the verb to be, because it's an ellipsis of You're taller than I am, where I is the subject of am, not the complement. I feel, however, that this example should be included somehow; I'm not sure how. — Eru·tuon 00:19, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

The objective pronouns work as emphatics by nature not understanding

"if the me is understood as an emphatic form". but... it is. should say, "but that prescription is only sociolinguistically meaningful."

English - Derived term

There might be:

• lyrical I
• lyrical I (with italics)
• lyrical 'I' (with single quotation marks)
• lyrical "I" (with double quotation marks).

I've seen each form at least once on google books. --80.133.109.107 15:08, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

/ə/

This word has no true weak form in Received Pronunciation, though in rapid casual speech it may become monophthongal a. In General American it is sometimes weakened to ə.
LPD

--Backinstadiums (talk) 12:57, 28 March 2020 (UTC)