já

Já is a Latin-script word distinguished by the acute-accented a, used in several languages with different meanings.

In Czech, já is the first-person singular pronoun meaning "I." It functions as the subject of a sentence and is often used for emphasis, as in Já jsem to udělal—"I am the one who did it." The form is normally lowercase and appears in inflected phrases with surrounding verbs, adjectives, or pronouns.

In Portuguese, já is primarily an adverb meaning "already" or "now." It is widely used in daily speech and writing, as in Já comi ("I have already eaten") or Já agora ("by the way" or "meanwhile"). Já can also serve as an interjection, expressing immediacy or insistence, as in Já! meaning "Come on!" or "Right away!"

Outside these languages, the sequence ja appears in linguistic contexts as a transliteration of the Cyrillic letter Я, which represents the sound "ya" in languages such as Russian. The form ya is common in scholarly transliterations and in discussions of Slavic phonology, though it is not itself a word in those scripts.

Etymology varies by language. In Czech, já traces to the Proto-Slavic root for the first-person pronoun, related to cognates in nearby languages. In Portuguese, já derives from Latin iam, meaning "already," with semantic extension to expresses immediacy. The cross-linguistic presence of ja/já illustrates how a simple two-letter sequence can acquire distinct grammatical roles across languages.