how to compare word letters using if statements?

I'm trying to write a program that reads a word and prints whether

-it ends with the letter y.

-has the same first and last character, ignoring case.

This is what I have so far, but I'm having trouble thinking of a line of code that will check individual letters or compare the first and last letters.

  if (. . .)
  {
     System.out.println(word + " ends in a y");
  }

  if (. . .)
  {
     System.out.println(word + " starts and ends with the same letter");
  }