Editing Yogh (section)

== History ==
[[File:Ploughmen Fac simile of a Miniature in a very ancient Anglo Saxon Manuscript published by Shaw with legend God Spede ye Plough and send us Korne enow.png|left|thumb|Yogh used for {{IPA|/x/|cat=no}} in Middle English: {{lang|enm|God spede þe plouȝ & sende us korne inow}} ("God speed the plough and send us corn enough")]]

===Old English===
{{Further|Insular G}}
The original Germanic ''g'' sound was expressed by the [[gyfu]] rune in the [[Anglo-Saxon runes|Anglo-Saxon futhorc]] (which is itself sometimes rendered as {{lang|ang|ȝ}} in modern [[Runic transliteration and transcription|transliteration]]). Following palatalization, both ''gyfu'' and Latin ''g'' in Old English expressed the {{IPA|/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 language|Proto-Germanic]] ''*jērą'').

With the re-introduced possibility of a {{IPA|/ɡ/}} 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 of confusion, and a distinction of "real ''g''" ({{IPA|/ɡ/}}) from "palatalized ''g''" ({{IPA|/j/}}) became desirable.

In the Old English period, [[Insular G|ᵹ]] was simply the way Latin ''[[g]]'' was written in the [[Insular script]] introduced at the [[Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England|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 [[Gh (digraph)|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''.{{clarify|date=August 2023}}<!--Did these words really have different pronunciations at the time when they were realisations of /x/, which is what the sentence talks about? Didn't they all have [x]? And saying that they 'persisted' sounds odd, since the identical pronunciation as [x] is the older situation and the difference is what is new.--> 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 language|Italian]], where the ''h'' makes the ''g'' hard (i.e., {{IPA|[ɡ]}} instead of {{IPA|[dʒ]}}); ''ghoul'' is [[Arabic]], in which the ''gh'' was {{IPA|/ɣ/}}.

The medieval author [[Ormulum|Orm]] used this letter in three ways when writing Early Middle English. By itself, it represented {{IPA|/j/}}, so he used this letter for the ''y'' in "yet". Doubled, it represented {{IPA|/i/}}, so he ended his spelling of "may" with two yoghs. Finally, the digraph of ''ȝh'' represented {{IPA|/ɣ/}}.<ref>{{cite book | last = Crystal | first = David | author-link = David Crystal | title = The Stories of English | date = 2004-09-09 | publisher = Overlook Press | location = New York | isbn = 1-58567-601-2 | page = [https://archive.org/details/storiesofenglish00crys/page/197 197] | url-access = registration | url = https://archive.org/details/storiesofenglish00crys/page/197 }}</ref>

In the late Middle English period, yogh was [[Middle English#Alphabet|no longer used]]: {{lang|ang|niȝt}} came to be spelled ''night''. Middle English re-imported [[Carolingian G|G in its French form]] for {{IPA|/ɡ/}} (As a further side note, [[French language|French]] also used  {{angle bracket|y}} to represent {{IPA|/j/}} in words like ''voyage'' and ''yeux'').

===Scots===
In words of [[French language|French]] and [[Scottish Gaelic|Gaelic]] origin, the [[Early Scots]] [[palatal consonant]] {{IPA |/[[palatal nasal|ɲ]]/}} had become {{IPA|/nj/}} or in some cases {{IPA|/ŋj/}}, and the palatal consonant {{IPA |/[[Palatal lateral approximant|ʎ]]/}} had become {{IPA|/lj/}} by the Middle Scots period.<ref name = "DOST" /> Those were variously written {{lang|ang|nȝ(h)e}}, {{lang|ang|ngȝe}}, {{lang |ang|ny(h)e}} or {{lang |ang|ny(i)e}}, and {{lang |ang|lȝ(h)e}}, {{lang|ang|ly(i)e}} or {{lang|ang|lyhe}} (cf. ''gn'' and ''gli'' in [[Italian language|Italian]]). By the [[Modern Scots]] period the yogh had been replaced by the character ''z'', in particular for {{IPA |/ŋj/}}, {{IPA |/nj/}} (''n{{lang |ang|ȝ}}'') and {{IPA |/lj/}} (''l{{lang |ang|ȝ}}''), written ''nz'' and ''lz''. The original {{IPA|/hj/}} and {{IPA|/çj/}} developed into {{IPA|/ʃ(j)/}} in some words such as {{lang|ang|Ȝetland}} or ''Zetland'' for ''Shetland''.<ref name = "DSL" /> Yogh was also used to represent {{IPA |/j/}} in words such as {{lang |ang|ȝe}}, {{lang|ang|ȝhistirday}}'' (yesterday) and {{lang |ang|ȝoung}}'' but by the Modern Scots period ''y'' had replaced yogh.<ref>{{Citation | last = Kniezsa | first = V | editor-last = Jones | editor-first = C | year = 1997 | title = The Edinburgh history of the Scots language | publisher = Edinburgh University Press | page = 38}}.</ref> The pronunciation of [[Mackenzie (surname)|MacKenzie]] (and its variant spellings) (from Scottish Gaelic {{lang|gd|MacCoinnich}} {{IPA|gd|maxˈkʰɤɲɪç|}}), originally pronounced {{IPA|sco|məˈkɛŋjiː|}} in Scots,<ref name = "DSL" /> 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 {{lang|ang|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.