Palatal glide /j/

 

Palatal glide /j/

/j/ is a palatal glide. To pronounce the /j/ sound, place the tip of the tongue just behind the lower front teeth and raise the middle of the tongue towards the roof of the mouth. The sides of the tongue come in contact with the top of the mouth, but the middle of the tongue does not touch the roof, creating a passageway for air from the lungs through the mouth.

Y as a vowel 

To be clear, the phoneme sound /j/ has nothing to do with the letter J. The letter J is commonly pronounced as /ʤ/, never as /j/. In English, /j/ sound is mainly represented  by the letter Y. The letter Y can be a consonant sound or a vowel sound. The letter Y is used as a vowel when it is at the end of a word, as in happy, my, fly, and boy. Y is also used as a vowel in the following words since it functions as the nucleus of a syllable: gym, myth, drying. When Y is used as a vowel, it substitutes for I, so it can make all the sounds that I can make: 

/ɪ/ gym, symbol

/i/ happy, baby

/aɪ/ shy, July, sky 

/eɪ/ say, pay, day

/ɔɪ/ joy, boy, toy

Y as consonant 

For all other cases, the letter Y is used as a consonant, /j/. That is, the letter Y is a consonant sound when it is at the beginning of a word, as in yes, you, yesterday, young, or is the first letter in the syllable before a vowel, as in beyond and Kayack. 

Words with /j/

These are words with the /j/ sound:

With Y: 

Year, yes, yard, you, young, your, yellow, yell, yogurt, yawn, yacht, yak, Yale, yam, yank, yap, yard, yawl, yay, ye, year, yen, yet, yeti, yoke, yolk, yum, yurt, beyond, kayak, canyon. (‘l’ is silent in yolk, and yoke and yolk are homophones.) 

With U: 

ukulele, ute, university, universal, union, U-shaped, useful, useless, uvula, uniform, pure. 

These words have /j/ sound with other spellings:

few, ewe, view, feud, beauty, Europe, companion, onion.