English Wikipedia - The Free Encycl...
Download this dictionary
IJ (Amsterdam)
The
IJ
(pronounced ; sometimes shown on old
maps
as
Y
or
Ye
) is a
body of water
, formerly a
bay
, in the
Dutch
province of
North Holland
. It is known for being
Amsterdam
's waterfront. It is considered a
river
by
Rijkswaterstaat
(a branch of the
Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment
), though some contest this qualification, calling the IJ a
lake
. Its name is an obsolete
Dutch
word meaning "water", derived from the
West Frisian
word
ie
"stream, small river" (from
Germanic
*
ahwo
"
water
") and is cognate with
Dutch
Aa/Ee names
for bodies of water. The name consists of the
digraph
ij
, which behaves like a single letter. Therefore, both letters are capitalized; cf.
IJmuiden
.
See more at Wikipedia.org...
© This article uses material from
Wikipedia
®
and is licensed under the
GNU Free Documentation License
and under the
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License