The retrieved evidence touches on phonetic associations with 'i' and alternations between 'i' and 'j', but contains no sources documenting a specific diachronic sound change from g to i or j.
It is widely assumed that one of the fundamental properties of spoken language is the arbitrary relation between sound and meaning. Some exceptions in the form of nonarbitrary associations have been documented in linguistics, cognitive science, and anthropology, but these studies only involved small subsets of the 6,000+ languages spoken in the world today. By analyzing word lists covering nearly two-thirds of the world's languages, we demonstrate that a considerable proportion of 100 basic vocabulary items carry strong associations with specific kinds of human speech sounds, occurring persistently across continents and linguistic lineages (linguistic families or isolates). Prominently among these relations, we find property words ("small" and i, "full" and p or b) and body part terms ("tongue" and l, "nose" and n). The areal and historical distribution of these associations suggests that they often emerge independently rather than being inherited or borrowed. Our results therefore have important implications for the language sciences, given that nonarbitrary associations have been proposed to play a critical role in the emergence of cross-modal mappings, the acquisition of language, and the evolution of our species' unique communication system.
familiar to English-speakers as the "y" sound in "young". The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨j⟩; the equivalent
A voiced palatal approximant is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the "y" sound in "young".
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨j⟩; the equivalent symbol in the Americanist phonetic notation is ⟨y⟩. In order to not imply that the approximant is spread as the vowel [i] is, it may instead be transcri
A voiced palatal approximant is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the "y" sound in "young".
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨j⟩; the equivalent symbol in the Americanist phonetic notation is ⟨y⟩. In order to not imply that the approximant is spread as the vowel [i] is, it may instead be transcribed ⟨ʝ̞⟩. When this sound occurs in the form of a palatal glide it is frequently, but not exclusively, denoted as a superscript j ⟨ʲ⟩ in IPA.
This sound is traditionally called a yod, after its name in Hebrew. This is reflected in the names of certain phonological changes, such as yod-dropping and yod-coalescence.
A palatal approximant is often the semivocalic equivalent of a close front unrounded vowel [i]. They alternate with each other in certain languages, such as French, and in the diphthongs of some languages as ⟨j⟩ and ⟨i̯⟩, with the non-syllabic diacritic used in some phonetic transcription systems to represent the same sound.
A…
Everything we examined (2)
This check searched the claim as stated. It did not run a separate search for evidence against it.