Yodh (also spelled jodh, yod, or jod) is the tenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician yōd 𐤉, Hebrew yod י‎, Aramaic yod 𐡉, Syriac yōḏ ܝ, and Arabic yāʾ ي‎. It is also related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪚‎‎‎, South Arabian 𐩺, and Ge'ez የ. Its sound value is /j/ in all languages for which it is used; in many languages, it also serves as a long vowel, representing /iː/.^{[citation needed]}

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Iota (Ι), Latin I and J, Cyrillic І, Coptic Iauda (Ⲓ) and Gothic eis .

The term yod is often used to refer to the speech sound [j], a palatal approximant, even in discussions of languages not written in Semitic abjads, as in phonological phenomena such as English "yod-dropping".

Derived from a Semitic pictograph representing a hand.

Before the late nineteenth century, the letter yāʼ was written without its two dots, especially those in the Levant.

The letter ي is named yāʼ (يَاء). It is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:

It is pronounced in four ways:

As a vowel, yāʾ can serve as the "seat" of the hamza: ئ