I can only see it as "y" - the difference in descender may be due to the position in the word. Also, I'm having trouble thinking of any alternative.
The month names originated from Latin, where Iūnius starts with a soft /j/ as in Dutch and German "ja". The sound of this initial "i" shifts to a harder "dj" or "dzj" or "zj" in French and English, but it's still one vowel consonant sound that's represented by "i" or "j".
(By the way, there are certainly cases where we transcribed a capital "I" as "J" instead, but I don't think the difference is relevant You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. )
Now there's something we might be missing. Let's call /j/ as in Dutch and German a "soft j" and the English and French variants "hard j". If I understand correctly, both "iong" and "jong" would be pronounced with a hard-j in medieval French. What about "yong" though? Wouldn't that be a soft-j?
In other words, does the "yong" spelling betray that the marginalia writer pronounced these months with /j/ instead of /dʒ/?
The month names originated from Latin, where Iūnius starts with a soft /j/ as in Dutch and German "ja". The sound of this initial "i" shifts to a harder "dj" or "dzj" or "zj" in French and English, but it's still one vowel consonant sound that's represented by "i" or "j".
(By the way, there are certainly cases where we transcribed a capital "I" as "J" instead, but I don't think the difference is relevant You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. )
Now there's something we might be missing. Let's call /j/ as in Dutch and German a "soft j" and the English and French variants "hard j". If I understand correctly, both "iong" and "jong" would be pronounced with a hard-j in medieval French. What about "yong" though? Wouldn't that be a soft-j?
In other words, does the "yong" spelling betray that the marginalia writer pronounced these months with /j/ instead of /dʒ/?