Actually your example is not contrieved, it cites words in French, which makes no use at all of this Dutch digraph; French however distinguishes "ÿ" as a valid letter in its alphabet and will distinguish it from "y" and "ij".
But with the old Dutch way of writing ij, it would become ÿ (keeping the dots), not "y", so your incorrect example "bijou(x)" would appear as "Bÿou(x)", not "Byou(x)... if only it was Dutch and if there was no syllable break between i and j like in this actual French word "bi-jou(x)". In capitals the dots would disappear and "BIJOU(X)" would become "BIJOU(X)" (with the ligature... if only it was Dutch), but the normal French "ÿ" (which occurs in rare words) considers the dots as a diareasis (where there's a clear syllable break before, as "ÿ" only occurs after another vowel, so that "ÿ" becomes a plain vowel /i/ with an leading glotal stop, and not the half-consonant /j/: "L'Haÿes-les-Roses" is clearly prononced /la·ʔi·lɛ·ʁoz/ (as if it was written "L'Hahi(es)-les-Roses") but not if there was not this diareasis it would be read incorrectly as /laj·lɛ·ʁoz/ (as if it was written "L'Aïl-les-Roses") (the "-es" termination is mute here). The need of a diareasis if very rare with "y" in French where "y" is normally /j/ after a vowel (but not before a final mute "e"), or /i/ after a consonnant, and the digrams "ay" and "oy" are working like "ai" /ɛ/ and "oi" /wa/ when final, or before a consonnant, or before other final mute letters. Why there's a "y" and not a "i" here is historic, it was initially pronounced /la·ji·lɛ·ʁoz/ and could have then been rewritten as "L'Hayies-les-Roses", but possibly incorrectly read as /lɛ·ji·lɛ·ʁoz/ (using the normal pronouciation of the "ay" digram like "ai". The diaresis solved the reading problem, the "y" was kept but without any following "i", to make sure it is not turned into a half-consonnant /j/ and remains an plain /i/ vowel, the the diareasis implies the glottal stop separation of syllables. All this is not relevant for "bijou(x)" or "BIJOU(X)", and not relevant for Dutch which treats the digram "ij" most often as a long form of the vowel /i/ alone (and not a pair with the vowel /i/ and a consonnant /ʒ/ or /dʒ/ or /j/ when there's a syllable break between them). In French, long vowels are no longer distinguished phonetically and never orthographically, other languages use diacritics such as a macron (for Japanese romanization) or an acute accent over stressed/long vowels. I suppose that the need to add acute accent in the Dutch digraph "ij" is to not just mark the length, but also the stress (accents are placed on both letters of the digraph, but it could as well been a single macron, a very unusual diacritic in Dutch). 2016-09-29 18:17 GMT+02:00 Michael Everson <[email protected]>: > y is not an acceptable variant of ij though. “Byoux” is not correct; > “bijoux” or “bijoux” is… > > > JFTR: > > > > - ij U+0133 > > - ij́ U+0133+0301 > > - ij̋ U+0133+030B > > - y U+0079 > > - ý U+0079+0301 > > - ý U+00FD > > - y̋ U+0079+030B > > - ÿ U+00FF > > - ÿ́ U+00FF+0301 > > - ÿ̋ U+00FF+030B > > > > <https://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/features_ko.htm#locl> > > >
