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.

This article is about the Middle English letter ȝ. For the IPA letter ʒ, see Ezh. For the Anglo-Saxon rune transcribed as ȝ, see Gyfu.
Ȝ
Ȝ ȝ
(See below, Typographic)
Usage
Writing systemLatin script
TypeAlphabetic
Language of originMiddle English language
Latin language
Phonetic usage[g]
[j]
[ŋ]
[ɣ]
[x]
[ç]
[i]
[ʃ]
[ʎ]
[ð]
/joʊɡ/
Unicode codepointU+021C, U+021D
History
Development
(speculated origin)
Time period~1150 to ~1500
DescendantsNone
SistersC
G
Г
ג
ج
ܓ
ࠂ
ℷ
𐡂
Ꝿ
Գ գ
Transliteration equivalentsch, g, gh, j, ng, y
Variations(See below, Typographic)
Other
Other letters commonly used withch, gh, g, j, ng y, z

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.[1] Consequently, some Lowland Scots words have a z in place of a yogh.

Yogh is shaped similarly to the Arabic numeral three (3), which is 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. The upper and lower case letters (Ȝ, ȝ) are represented in Unicode by code points U+021C Ȝ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER YOGH (HTML Ȝ) and U+021D ȝ LATIN SMALL LETTER YOGH (HTML ȝ) respectively.

Pronunciation
Capital yogh (left), lowercase yogh (right)

In Modern English yogh is pronounced /jɒɡ/, /jɒx/, using short o[2] or /joʊɡ/, /joʊk/, /joʊx/, using long o.[3]

It stood for /ɡ/ and its various allophones—including [ɡ] and the voiced velar fricative [ɣ]—as well as the phoneme /j/ (⟨y⟩ in modern English orthography). In Middle English, it also stood for the phoneme /x/ and its allophone [ç] as in ⟨niȝt⟩ ("night", in an early Middle English way still often pronounced as spelled so: [niçt]). Sometimes, yogh stood for /j/ or /w/, as in the word ⟨ȝoȝelinge⟩ [ˈjowəlɪŋɡə], "yowling".

In Middle Scots, it represented the sound /j/ in the clusters /lj/, /ŋj/ and /nj/ written lȝ and nȝ.[4] Yogh was generally used for /j/ rather than y.

In medieval Cornish manuscripts, yogh was used to represent the voiced dental fricative [ð], as in its ⟨ȝoȝo⟩, now written ⟨dhodho⟩, pronounced [ðoðo].

History
Yogh used for /x/ in Middle English: God spede þe plouȝ: ⁊ sende us kǫrne inolk. ("God speed the plough: and send us corn enough.")

Old English
Further information: Insular G

The original Germanic g sound was expressed by the gyfu rune in the Anglo-Saxon futhorc (which is itself sometimes rendered as ȝ in modern transliteration). Following palatalization, both gyfu and Latin g in Old English expressed the /j/ sound before front vowels. For example, "year" was written as gear, even though the word had never had a g sound (deriving from Proto-Germanic *jērą).

With the re-introduced possibility of a /g/ sound before front vowels, notably in the form of loanwords from the Old Norse (such as gere from Norse gervi, Modern English gear), this orthographical state of affairs became a source for confusion, and a distinction of "real g" (/g/) from "palatalized g" (/j/) 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 Anglo-Saxon 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

Some Norman scribes avoided non-Latin characters and certain spellings in English and therefore the digraph gh arose as an alternative to yogh; 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 (which lacked yogh) 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 (i.e., [ɡ] instead of [dʒ]); ghoul is Arabic, in which the gh was /ɣ/.

The medieval author Orm used this letter in three ways when writing Early Middle English. By itself, it represented /j/, so he used this letter for the y in "yet". Doubled, it represented /i/, so he ended his spelling of "may" with two yoghs. Finally, the digraph of yogh followed by an h represented /ɣ/.[5]

In the late Middle English period, yogh was no longer used: niȝt came to be spelled night. Middle English re-imported G in its French form for /ɡ/.

Scots

In words of French and Gaelic origin, the Early Scots palatal consonant /ɲ/ had become /nj/ or in some cases /ŋj/, and the palatal consonant /ʎ/ had become /lj/ by the Middle Scots period.[4] Those were variously written nȝ(h)e, ngȝe, ny(h)e or ny(i)e, and lȝ(h)e, ly(i)e or lyhe (cf. gn and gli in Italian). By the Modern Scots period the yogh had been replaced by the character z, in particular for /ŋj/, /nj/ (nȝ) and /lj/ (lȝ), written nz and lz. The original /hj/ and /çj/ developed into /ʃ(j)/ in some words such as Ȝetland or Zetland for Shetland.[1] Yogh was also used to represent /j/ in words such as ȝe, ȝhistirday (yesterday) and ȝoung but by the Modern Scots period y had replaced yogh.[6] The pronunciation of MacKenzie (and its variant spellings) (from Scottish Gaelic MacCoinnich [maxˈkʰɤɲɪç]), originally pronounced [məˈkɛŋjiː] in Scots,[1] 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 (Ʒ ʒ), and yogh itself was not added to Unicode until version 3.0.

List of Middle English words containing a yogh

These are examples of Middle English words that contain the letter yogh in their spellings.[7]

Scots words with ⟨z⟩ for ⟨ȝ⟩

Placenames
  • Ben Chonzie – a mountain in Perthshire;
  • Branziert – a suburb of Killearn in Stirlingshire;
  • The Branziet – pronounced bringit (IPA /brɪŋɪt/), a farm and settlement near Bardowie, East Dunbartonshire that lends its name to the Branziet Burn and Branziet Bridge;
  • Bunzion – pronounced bunion (IPA /bʌnjən/), Lower and Upper Bunzion are farms in the Parish of Cults, Fife;
  • Cadzow – the former name of the town of Hamilton, South Lanarkshire; the word Cadzow continues in modern use in many street names and other names, e.g. Cadzow Castle, Kilncadzow;
  • Calzeat – Lanarkshire;
  • Calziebohalzie – a former farmstead in Stirlingshire with a rare instance of a word containing two yoghs, from Gaelic Coille Buachaille (Scottish Gaelic pronunciation: [kʰɤʎəˈpuəxɪʎə]);
  • Cockenzie – pronounced cockennie (IPA [koˈkɪni]), from the Scottish Gaelic: Cùil Choinnich meaning "cove of Kenneth", a town in East Lothian;
  • Colzium Estate – now pronounced as written, a historic estate and mansion house built on the banks of the Colzium Burn near Kilsyth;
  • Corriemulzie – a river in Sutherland that lends its name to the Corriemulzie Estate;[10]
  • Crailzie Hill – a hill in the Scottish Borders;
  • Culzean – pronounced culain (IPA /kʌˈleɪn/), a historic castle in Ayrshire run by the National trust for Scotland;
  • Dalmunzie – now pronounced as written, a historic castle in Perthshire now repurposed as a hotel;[11]
  • Drumelzier – pronounced drumellier (IPA /drʌˈmɛljɛr/), a village in the Tweed Valley;
  • Drunzie and Drunzie Feus - two adjacent settlements near Glenfarg in Perth and Kinross;
  • Easter Dalziel – pronounced deeyel (IPA /diːˈɛl/) from Gaelic Dail Gheal ([t̪alˈʝal̪ˠ]) meaning "white field";
  • Edzell – now pronounced as written, a village in Angus and the nearby settlement Edzell Woods;
  • Finzean – pronounced fingen (IPA /ˈfɪŋən/), an area in rural Aberdeenshire;
  • Funzie Girt – pronounced funyie girt (IPA /ˈfɪnji ˈɡɜːrt/), a historic dividing wall on Fetlar;
  • Gartwhinzean – a historic settlement near Crook of Devon in Perth and Kinross;
  • Glenzier – pronounced glinger (IPA /ˈɡlɪŋər/), a village in Dumfries & Galloway which lends its name to Glenzierfoot and the Glenzier Burn;
  • Kailzie Gardens – a historic walled garden near Kirkburn, Scottish Borders;
  • Kilchenzie or Kilkenzie – a small settlement on the Kintyre peninsula, from Choinnich (Scottish Gaelic pronunciation: [ˈxɤɲɪç]), the genitive of Coinneach (Scottish Gaelic pronunciation: [ˈkʰɤɲəx]) "Kenneth";
  • Kilhenzie – a small settlement in South Ayrshire, also from Choinnich;
  • Kirkgunzeon – pronounced kirkgunion (IPA /kɜːrkɡʌnjən/), a village in Dumfries and Galloway;
  • Lenzie – now pronounced as written (IPA /ˈlɛnzɪ/), but previously lenyie (IPA /ˈlɛnjɪ/), a village near Glasgow;
  • Lochranza – pronounced as written, but found as Loch Ranga as recently as the late 19th century, a village on the Isle of Arran;
  • Menzion – a village in the Borders;
  • Menzieshill – an area of Dundee;
  • Monzie – pronounced money (IPA /ˈmʌni/), from the Gaelic Moighidh, "a level tract", a parish in Perthshire near Crieff which lends its name to Loch Monzievaird and the Falls of Monzie;
  • Moonzie – a parish in Fife generally supposed to be from Gaelic and meaning "hill of the deer";
  • Portencalzie – a small settlement near Kirkcolm on the Rhins of Galloway;
  • Pitcalzean – an obscure archaeological enclosure near the village of Nigg, Highland[12] that lends its name to nearby Pitcalzean House;[12]
  • Queenzieburn – pronounced queenieburn (IPA /kwiːnibɜːrn/), a village in Lanarkshire;
  • Ruchazie – now pronounced as written (IPA /rʌxˈheɪzɪ/), a district of Glasgow;
  • Terringzean Castle – pronounced tringan (IPA /ˈtrɪŋən/) but with a variety of recorded spellings, a castle in East Ayrshire;
  • Ulzieside – an estate and farm near Sanquhar in Dumfries and Galloway;
  • Zell – archaic spelling of the island of Yell;
  • Zetland – the name for Shetland until the 1970s – Shetland postcodes begin with the letters ZE.

Surnames
  • Cadzow – see placename;
  • Dalziel – pronounced deeyel (IPA /diːˈɛl/) or dehyell, from Gaelic Dail Gheal ([t̪alˈʝal̪ˠ]); also spelled Dalyell and Dalzell;
  • Gilzean – pronounced gilain, a variant of Maclean, from Gaelic MacGilleEathain ([maxkʲɪˈʎe.ɛɲ]). However, many now pronounce the 'z', including footballer Alan Gilzean;[13]
  • Layamon – now pronounced as written although frequently rendered as Laȝamon up to the early 1900s in literary referents;[14]
  • MacKenzie – now pronounced as written, though as late as 1946 George Black recorded the original form pronounced makenyie (IPA /məˈkɛŋji/), from the Gaelic MacCoinnich ([maxˈkʰɤɲɪç]) as standard;[15]
  • Menzies – most correctly pronounced mingis (IPA /ˈmɪŋɪs/),[16] now also pronounced with /z/;
  • Winzet – pronounced winyet (IPA /ˈwɪnjət/).
  • McFadzean

Miscellaneous nouns
  • Assoilzie – pronounced with a silent z – in Scots law: finding for (ruling in favour of) the defender in a civil matter;
  • Capercailzie – the Scots spelling of capercaillie (IPA /ˌkæpərˈkeɪli/) from the Gaelic capall-coille ([kʰaʰpəl̪ˠˈkʰɤʎə]) meaning "forest horse";
  • Gaberlunzie – most correctly pronounced gaberlunyie (IPA /ɡæbərˈlʌnji/) but now often pronounced as written, a licensed beggar;
  • Tailzie – pronounced [ˈteɪli] in Scots law: a defunct since 2000 term for an entailed estate/interest in one.
  • Tuilzie – a struggle or fight.

In Egyptology

A Unicode-based transliteration system adopted by the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale[17] suggested the use of the yogh ȝ character as the transliteration of the Ancient Egyptian "aleph" glyph:

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 (uppercase U+A722 Ꜣ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL ALEF, lowercase U+A723 ꜣ LATIN SMALL LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL ALEF); a fallback is the numeral 3.

References
  1. "Z", DSL: Dictionary of the Scots Language / Dictionar o the Scots Leid, UK: DSL.
  2. "yogh". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  3. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th ed.).
  4. DOST: A History of Scots to 1700, UK: DSL.
  5. Crystal, David (2004-09-09). The Stories of English. New York: Overlook Press. p. 197. ISBN 1-58567-601-2.
  6. Kniezsa, V (1997), Jones, C (ed.), The Edinburgh history of the Scots language, Edinburgh University Press, p. 38.
  7. OED online.
  8. "English gilds: the original ordinances of more than one hundred early English gilds", Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, University of Michigan, 1999, retrieved 2011-06-23
  9. Piers Plowman, Wikisource.
  10. "Corriemulzie Estate - Scottish Highlands Lodge & Cottage - Trout & Salmon Fishing, Red Deer Stalking". corriemulzieestate.com.
  11. "Dalmunzie Castle Hotel". Retrieved 14 September 2017.
  12. "Pitcalzean | Canmore". canmore.org.uk.
  13. Morgan, James (17 October 2011). In Search of Alan Gilzean. BackPage Press. ISBN 9780956497116 – via Google Books.
  14. Eaton, Lucy Allen (1960), Studies in the fairy mythology of Arthurian romance, Burt Franklin, p. vii.
  15. Black, George (1946), The Surnames of Scotland, p. 525.
  16. Hanks, P (2003), Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press.
  17. "Polices de caractères". Institut français d'archéologie orientale – Le Caire (in French). Retrieved 13 September 2014.
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