yogh

Yogh (uppercase Ȝ, lowercase ȝ) is a letter once used in Middle English and Middle Scots as part of the Latin-based alphabets of the period. The character appears in manuscripts and early printed texts and is recognizable by its distinctive form, which resembles a small 3 or a vertical stroke with a tail. Yogh was used from roughly the 12th to the 15th or 16th centuries, after which printers and writers largely replaced it with other letters such as y, gh, or z. In modern encodings, yogh is represented in Unicode as U+021C (uppercase) and U+021D (lowercase).

Origins and usage: The exact origin of yogh is debated, but it is generally thought to derive from an insular form of the letter g or a variant of the letter y used in the medieval period. The phonetic value of yogh varied by dialect and era. In some contexts it represented a y-sound before a following vowel, while in other positions it denoted a velar fricative or fricative-like sound (written variously as /x/ or /ɣ/) or a hard /g/ value in certain words. This variability contributed to inconsistent spellings across texts.

Legacy: Yogh is of particular interest to philologists, linguists, and historians studying medieval English and Scots orthography. Modern editions of older manuscripts often transliterate yogh as y, gh, or z, depending on the word and edition. The letter’s existence illustrates the diversity of medieval writing systems and the transition to the more standardized orthographies that followed.