Latin Small Letter Dotless I

The Latin Small Letter Dotless I at U+0131 is a lowercase Latin letter whose missing dot is meaningful, not a stylistic omission. It belongs to the Latin Extended-A block and represents a separate vowel letter in alphabets that distinguish dotted i from dotless ı. Its central use is in Turkish, where ı is the lowercase form of capital I and usually represents the close back unrounded vowel, roughly like the final vowel in a careful pronunciation of “roses” for many speakers. This contrast changes real words: yıl means “year,” while yil would be misspelled in Turkish because i and ı are different letters. The letter is also used in Azerbaijani, Crimean Tatar, and several other Latin-script Turkic orthographies with similar dotted-versus-dotless I distinctions. It appears in personal names, place names, dictionaries, language-learning material, and linguistic writing about vowel harmony, transliteration, and Turkic phonology. The main practical issue is casing and search: in Turkish text, ı uppercases to I, while i uppercases to İ. Systems using English-style assumptions about I and i can corrupt names or fail to match words correctly.