When the standardized writing system was developed, it was decided to use the j character to make the y sound heard in the English word ‘you’. This was done in part, to match the orthography used in Greenland, which has a long history as a written language. In Greenland this sound is written with j.
For most communities in Nunavut, this posed few problems because, at the time, they almost always wrote in syllabics.
Inuinnaqtun speaking communities, though, had a history of reading religious texts written in their dialect using roman orthography. In these texts, the use of the letter y was well established.
Most Inuinnaqtun speakers today who have adopted the standardized writing system, still prefer the use of y over j. We have reflected this preference in the Inuinnaqtun materials on Tusaalanga.