why is y in the alphabet?

Answer 1

Why not?

Answer 2

Because some languages need it badly, to the extent that it can be regarded as an extra vowel. Some languages, indeed, have entire words consisting only of the letter "y", examples being Welsh, French and Spanish.

Why, oh why do you question the y?

Answer 3

y - whose name in a number of other European languages means "Greek i" - corresponds to the Greek letter ipsilon - (sometimes spelt ypsilon or upsilon) - this letter actually looks a bit like a Latin "u", but in modern Greek is pronounced "i" (rhyming with "ee" in English). No one can be sure exactly how it was pronounced in ancient/classical Greek but it is popularly believed that it sounded like German ü (which is an "oo" sound made at the same time as holding your lips in the same position as to make the sound "ee". In German the letter "y" does not appear all that often but when it does, it still has the same sound as "ü").

That is why it has a separate in Greek and many words that contained it kept it in the form of a y when they passed into English - "physics", "Cyprus", "Egypt", etc.

It also serves as the best way to denote the sound at the beginning of words like "you", "yard" - if you tried to spell these words with a different letter - eg, -"i" - "iou", "iard", they would logically be pronounced "ee-oo", "ee-ard" instead of "you", "yard".

The popular device of spelling the word "the" as "ye" - as in "Ye Olde Tea Shoppe" - to make a name look medieval stems from a misreading the old English letter "þ" - which looks a bit like a "y" in handwriting - but which was the Anglosaxon way of writing "th" as in "þe" - the, "þæt" - that.

Answer 4

same reason why every other letter is there