Yogh


The letter yogh is a Latin script letter that was used in Middle English and Scots |Older Scots], representing y and various velar phonemes. It’s replaced with the letter G in the Artistic Alphabet and It descends from the Insular G, the form of the letter g in the medieval Insular script, ᵹ.
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.
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 not standardised at the time. Capital Ȝ is represented in Unicode by code point, and lower case ȝ by code point.

Pronunciation

In Modern English, "yogh" is pronounced, using short o or,,, using long o.
It stood for and its various allophones—including and the velar fricative">velar consonant">velar fricative —as well as the phoneme . In Middle English, it also stood for the phoneme and its allophone as in , and also represented the phonemes /j/ and /dʒ/. Sometimes yogh stood for or, as in the word .
In Middle Scots, it represented the sound in the clusters, and, written lȝ and nȝ.
In medieval Cornish manuscripts, yogh was used to represent the voiced dental fricative, as in, now written, pronounced.

History

Old English

The original Germanic g sound was expressed by the gyfu rune in the Anglo-Saxon futhorc. Following palatalization, both gyfu and Latin g in Old English expressed the sound before front vowels. For example, "year" was written as gear, even though the word had never had a g sound.
With the re-introduced possibility of a sound before front vowels, notably in the form of loanwords from the Old Norse, this orthographical state of affairs became a source of confusion, and a distinction of "real g" from "palatalized g" became desirable.
In the Old English period, ᵹ was simply the way Latin g was written in the Insular script introduced at the Christianisation of England by the Hiberno-Scottish mission. It only came to be used as a letter distinct from g in the Middle English period, where it evolved in appearance into ȝ, now considered a separate character.

Middle English

In the 14th century, the digraph gh arose as an alternative to yogh for /x/, and eventually overtook yogh in popularity; still, the variety of pronunciations persisted, as evidenced by cough, taught, and though. The process of replacing the yogh with gh was slow, and was not completed until the arrival of printing presses in England around the end of the fifteenth century. Not every English word that contains a gh was originally spelled with a yogh: for example, spaghetti is Italian, where the h makes the g hard ; ghoul is Arabic, in which the gh was.
The medieval author Orm used this letter in three ways when writing Early Middle English. By itself, it represented, so he used this letter for the y in "yet". Doubled, it represented, so he ended his spelling of "may" with two yoghs. Finally, the digraph of ȝh represented.
In the late Middle English period, yogh was no longer used: niȝt came to be spelled night. Middle English re-imported [Carolingian G|G in its French form] for .

Scots

In words of French and Gaelic origin, the Early Scots palatal consonant had become or in some cases, and the palatal consonant had become by the Middle Scots period. Those were variously written nȝe, ngȝe, or, and, lye or lyhe. By the Modern Scots period the yogh had been replaced by the character z, in particular for, and , written nz and lz. The original and developed into in some words such as Ȝetland or Zetland for Shetland. Yogh was also used to represent in words such as, ȝhistirday and but by the Modern Scots period y had replaced yogh. The pronunciation of MacKenzie , originally pronounced in Scots, shows where yogh became z. Menzies Campbell is another example.

After the development of printing

In Middle Scots orthography, the use of yogh became confused with a cursive z and the early Scots printers often used z when yogh was not available in their fonts.
The yogh glyph can be found in surnames that start with a Y in Scotland and Ireland; for example the surname Yeoman, which would have been spelled Ȝeman. Sometimes, the yogh would be replaced by the letter z, because the shape of the yogh was identical to some forms of handwritten z.
In Unicode 1.0, the character yogh was mistakenly unified with the quite different character ezh, and yogh itself was not added to Unicode until version 3.0.

Examples of Middle English words containing a yogh

These are examples of Middle English words that contain the letter yogh in their spellings.
  • niȝt
  • yȝe
  • ȝha
  • yhalȝed
  • ȝhat
  • ȝhed
  • yȝld, yȝened
  • yherberȝed
  • ȝhere
  • yhyȝed
  • ȝiefte
  • ȝise
  • ȝista
  • ȝister-
  • ȝit
  • ȝive
  • wrouȝte

    Scots words with for

Placenames

See also:
  • Lochranza – a village and sea loch on the Isle of Arran the in this instance deriving from, but nonetheless mistaken as a yogh with written referents to Loch Ranga found in the 19th century

    Placenames standardised without

  • Cu' Dheis – a township on Tiree previously found as Cowzeise;
  • Yieldshields – now written as pronounced although previously found as Zuildshields;
  • Yell – found archaically as Zell in early modern texts;
  • Shetland – known commonly as Zetland in the nineteenth century – Zetland County Council being the official name of the county from 1890 until 1975 resulting in Shetland postcodes beginning with the letters ZE.

    Surnames

  • Alzie – a surname, historically found in Renfrewshire, Glasgow and Lanarkshire and possibly an alternate spelling of Algie. The name fell into disuse in the early nineteenth century;
  • Cadzow – see placename;
  • Dalziel – pronounced deeyel or dehyell, from Gaelic Dail Gheal ; also spelled Dalyell and Dalzell;
  • Gilzean – pronounced gilain, a variant of Maclean, from Gaelic MacGilleEathain. However, many now pronounce the 'z', including footballer Alan Gilzean;
  • Malzie – a now defunct surname possibly related to the Dumfries & Galloway placename;
  • McFadzean – pronounced macfadyen, scotticised version of the Gaelic surname MacPhaidin also found, primarily in Ireland, anglicised as MacFadden;
  • MacKenzie – now pronounced as written, though as late as 1946 George Black recorded the original form pronounced makenyie, from the Gaelic MacCoinnich as standard;
  • Menzies – most correctly pronounced mingis, now also pronounced with ;
  • Winzet – pronounced winyet.
See also:
  • Gilhaize – a seemingly invented surname used for the eponymous protagonist of John Galt's Ringan Gilhaize
  • Layamon – now written as pronounced although frequently rendered with a yogh as Laȝamon up to the early 1900s in literary referents;

    Miscellaneous nouns

  • Assoilzie – pronounced with a silent z – in Scots law: acquittal or ruling in favour of the defender in a civil matter;
  • Brulzie – with a variety of spellings including bruilzie and broolzie – a commotion or noisy quarrel – possibly related to Brulyie to broil;
  • Capercailzie – the Scots spelling of capercaillie from the Gaelic capall-coille meaning "forest horse";
  • Gaberlunzie – most correctly pronounced gaberlunyie but now often pronounced as written, a licensed beggar;
  • Spulzie — pronounced spooly with a variety of spellings including spuilzie and spulyie, both the taking of movable goods and the term for a process of restitution for such crimes;
  • Tailzie – pronounced in Scots law: a defunct since 2000 term for an entailed estate/interest in one;
  • Tuilzie – now standardised to Tulyie a struggle or fight, from the Old French 'toeillier' meaning to strive, dispute or struggle;
  • Ulzie – pronounced ooly, oil. Found in reference to "The Ulzie Ball" held by Longforgan weavers once daylight had returned sufficiently to allow work without the use of oil lamps.

    In Egyptology

A Unicode-based transliteration system adopted by the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale suggested the use of the yogh ȝ character as the transliteration of the Ancient Egyptian "aleph" glyph: A
The symbol actually used in Egyptology is, two half-rings opening to the left. Since Unicode 5.1, it has been assigned its own codepoints ; a fallback is the numeral 3.