Vocabulary:

Some people are confused when they are confronted with the results of an older German grammar rule which allows the replacement of the letter 'I' with the letter 'J'. Examples would be 'JMPERIAL', 'MADE JN GERMANY' or some town names like the often quoted 'JLMENAU' which actually means 'ILMENAU'. This substitution of letters was very common in German writing up until shortly after WWII but was then removed from use in West Germany. I did not even hear about these old rules during my time at school in Germany between 1972 and 1986 so it must have been abolished a long time before. In the former areas of East Germany though this form was still used for quite some time and various examples still show its use up until around 1980. In the older writing form there was often no distinction made between the capital 'I' and the capital 'J' but one could easily recognise what letter was meant because when followed by a vowel the letter is a consonant (J) and when followed by a consonant, it is a vowel (I) - which of course explains why 'Jlmenau' actually stands for 'Ilmenau'.