Ȝ
The letter Ȝ ( Majuskel , Unicode U + 021C) or Ȝ ( minuscule , Unicode U + 021D), called yogh or Ȝoȝ was Middle English an independent letter of the alphabet . It persisted in Scottish until the 17th century. It was used very inconsistently by different authors, copyists and printers for different allophones of the / g /.
pronunciation
The yogh developed from the semi-uncial variant of the letter G , which was developed in Ireland in the early Middle Ages. With the Christianization of England among other things by Irish missionaries and the accompanying introduction of the Latin alphabet, this grapheme was subsequently used in old English manuscripts for the [g] and its various allophones , thus:
- [ g ] ("hard G") in the position before the dark vowels a , o and u ; Example: God "God"
- [ ɣ ] ("soft G") between vowels in front of dark vowels; Example: maga "stomach"
- [ j ] before and after the light vowels / letters i , æ , e and y ; Example: gebróðru "brothers"
- [ ʤ ] after n and in the digraph cg ; Example: angel "angel"
After the Norman invasion and the beginning of the Middle English period, the semi-uncial / g / was developed into a yogh , while the Carolingian G was adopted from mainland Europe for the hard G [ g ] and mostly also for the [ ʤ ], especially in French loanwords. The yogh was preferred for the [j] borrowed from Old English. It also appeared in places for which other letters were used in Old English:
- the soft G of Old English ([ɣ]) was added to [w] umlauted . This bilabial was realized very differently by different authors. In addition to the digraph <uu> and the Wynn rune Ƿ, the yogh was also used to represent it. Old English fēolaga [feːəlɑɣɑ] (“companion”) became the Middle English felaȝ (e) [feːlaw (ə)]. In the course of time, however, the yogh at this point was replaced by the digraph <uu>, which eventually evolved into the letter W ; this is how the New English word fellow is written .
- In Middle English, yogh also stood for the “oh sound” [ x ] and its allophone [ ç ], the “I sound”, which in Old English was still realized by the letter / h /. So the Old English niht ['nixt] ("night") became the Middle English niȝt with unchanged sound .
In late Middle English, i.e. in the 14th and 15th centuries, and especially after the introduction of letterpress printing in the British Isles, the yogh was increasingly replaced by other letters. In cases where it stood for the [x], it was mostly replaced by the digraph <gh>. The old English þurh [θurx] “durch” became through metathesis first the Middle English þruȝ [θruːx] and finally the New English through [θɹuː]. The [x] sound fell silent in early New English or was in some cases changed to [f], for example Middle English coȝ [kɔx] became New English cough [kɒf] "cough" (compare German "panting").