“Y” is the 25th letter in the English alphabet.
Oooooh! We are almost at the end of the modern English alphabet – the letter Y is the second to last letter.
When writing modern English, Y sometimes represents a vowel and sometimes a consonant. When using the letter Y as a vowel, it takes the place of the letter “i” as in the girl’s name Robyn. When used as a consonant, you find the letter Y at the beginning, end and middle of many words.
Y can come at the end of simple words (one-syllable) like play, boy, grey, sky, they are silent letters. The letter Y also comes at the end of words with double syllables like baby, happy that often have an “e” before the Y as in money and monkey!
It is surprising to see some words spelled out; when you think the word sounds as if an “i” is in it and you see it spelled with “y” in it – like these words: gymnastics, system, lyrics, and pyjamas. Can you think of other big words where a “y” is used instead of an “i”?
Can you think of names for boys and girls that begin with Y? There are not that many in plain English, but you will find Hebrew, Indian, Greek and Russian names that have Y at the beginning – they are all so unusual.
Games children play!
School children all over the world play a little game when out on the playing field. Two, three or four and sometimes a few more join arms at the elbow and walk in a straight line, chanting “We walk straight so you better get out the way! Y is a crooked letter and you can’t make it straight!”
There are some other fun sayings too like: “Yellow, yellow you lucky fellow – or Yella, Yella, you lucky fella!” There are quite a few words that begin with Y, can you think of any? To start you off, here are some: yellow, yell, yew, you, yours, yucky, and yesterday! (Yew is a name of a kind of tree.)
Most animals with Y at the beginning of their name have the word Yellow – something like Yellow-bellied marmot or Yellow baboon! One animal’s name that begins with Y is Yak! Do you know what a yak is?
Yak – a large domesticated wild ox with shaggy hair, humped shoulders, and large horns, used in Tibet as a pack animal – like donkeys were used in the olden days on St. Maarten. The Yak is also used for its milk, meat, and hide (the hide is the skin.) There are many people who have these big cow-like animals that have become domesticated, in their herds.
Wild yaks, some people say, are a different species to the domesticated ones but they freely interbreed with various kinds of cattle. Wild yaks are big; the males (called bulls) can stand more than six feet tall. That is a huge kind of cow!
Yaks have long black hair over a shorter blackish or brown undercoat that can keep them warm because where you find Yaks living up in the Himalaya Mountains is often freezing cold with thick snow lying on the ground.
Yaks were first used many, many years ago when people travelled a route called the Himalayan Trade Route. These people used to take days travelling across high mountains in “caravans”. (This means a group of people and their yaks, not a caravan which is attached to a car and something you can sleep in.) These mountains are so high it is difficult to breathe up there, but the yak’s lung capacity is about three times that of cattle and so they can breathe more easily at those heights! When yaks are thirsty, they eat snow if they can’t find a water source.
The wild yaks were hunted and almost became extinct.
