It is my intuition, that the origin of the letter y comes from ij based on the usage in Dutch where it very closely resembles ij in both sound and shape. I would go so far as to say it looks like a contraction.
I am particularly interested in this right now, as a company has translated a foreign name into English, and included iy in the name – which strikes me as unusual. If I were transliterating their name, Bafiya seems wrong – and I feel it is better as Bafya or Bafia.
It is hard to justify my opinion, so I was curious about the usage of iy. I can not think of any words that contain iy in them. Are there any?
/tɛrɪˈjɑːkɪ/
, which in my experience is indeed its standard pronunciation. To assert otherwise seems misguided at best. Also, if you don’t have IPA, please do not bother. It is not reasonable on an international forum to expect people to learn a new set of non-standard, proprietary hieroglyphics for each utterance. It is for this reason that IPA was invented: it is the international standard. – tchrist♦ Dec 5 '12 at 14:56