Yogh
The letter yogh (ȝogh) (Ȝ ȝ; Scots: yoch; Middle English: ȝogh) was used in Middle English and Older Scots, representing y (/j/) and various velar phonemes. It was derived from the Insular form of the letter g, Ᵹᵹ.
| Ȝ | |
|---|---|
| Ȝ ȝ | |
| (See below, Typographic) | |
| Usage | |
| Writing system | Latin script |
| Type | Alphabetic |
| Language of origin | Middle English language Latin language |
| Phonetic usage | [g] [j] [ŋ] [ɣ] [x] [ç] [i] [ʃ] [ʎ] [ð] [dʒ] |
| History | |
| Development | |
| Time period | ~1150 to ~1500 |
| Descendants | None |
| Sisters | C G Г ג ج ܓ ࠂ ג 𐡂 Ꝿ Գ գ |
| Transliteration equivalents | ch, g, gh, j, ng, y |
| Variations | (See below, Typographic) |
| Other | |
| Other letters commonly used with | ch, gh, g, j, ng y, z |
| Writing direction | Left-to-Right |
In Middle English writing, tailed z came to be indistinguishable from yogh.
In Middle Scots, the character yogh became confused with a cursive z and the early Scots printers often used z when yogh was not available in their fonts. Consequently, some Modern Scots words have a z in place of a yogh—the common surname Menzies was originally written Menȝies (pronounced mingis).
Yogh is shaped similarly to the Cyrillic letter З and the Arabic numeral 3, which are sometimes substituted for the character in online reference works. There is some confusion about the letter in the literature, as the English language was far from standardised at the time. Capital Ȝ is represented in Unicode by code point U+021C Ȝ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER YOGH, and lower case ȝ by code point U+021D ȝ LATIN SMALL LETTER YOGH.