The letter
yogh (
? ?;
Middle English ?ogh) was used in
Middle English and
Middle Scots, representing y (
/j/) and various
velar phonemes. Velars are sounds that are usually made when the back of the tongue is pressed against the soft palate. They include the
k in
cat, the
g in
girl, and the
ng (IPA
[?]) in
hang.In Middle English writing, tailed z came to be indistinguishable from yogh, and consequently some Lowland Scots words have a z in place of a yogh.
Yogh is shaped like 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 (?,?) are represented in Unicode by code points U+021C and U+021D respectively.
Though this is often cause for confusion, when writing Old English, the letter ? should not be substituted bor ?.
