Talk:Yogh

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THIS ARTICLE IS CLEARLY BIASED. HOW COULD SUCH A BIASED ARTICLE SLIP THROUGH THE FILTERS OF THE MODERATORS HERE? MY GOD AM I OFFENDED! 204.108.148.12 14:04, 28 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

Um. If you're serious, you might want to be more specific. —Muke Tever talk (la.wiktionary) 19:08, 28 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

Judging by this IP address' past edits, I think it's fairly safe to assume that this is the complete opposite of seriousness. POV warning removed. Also, Muke, loving your Frath wiki. Matsu 03:35, 29 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

Has anybody else looked at this? It's freaking amazing! I don't speak French or else I would heavily consider adapting the entire thing to the current English entry. Seriously, it was a Featured Article in the French Wikipedia. --anon

I agree. With apologies to current editors of this article, who have certainly put a lot of work into it, the French version is much better in every respect. Unless there are strong objections, I plan to replace the current article with a translation.05:17, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

When I first read the caption next to the Yogh graphic it was confusing. When it said the lowercase was "right" I thought it meant literally to the right of the text, meaning the uppercase was to the left and the lowercase was on the right. For example:

3 (uppercase) blah blah explanation blah blah 3 (lowerrcase)

No big deal. Maybe this?

Capital yogh (the upper '3'), lowercase yogh (the lower '3').

I don't like the boxes, if I were browsing here and was told to go download something and come back later I wouldn't be too impressed. I'd replace the boxes with ' 3 ' and a brief explain why it isn't the true letter Yogh (especially the lowercase Yogh.)--Dhughes 21:34, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Boxes... argh. I wish some browsers would adopt a better display for chars they can't render. I'll replace them with 3's as that is what is usually done for Yoghs. Apologies for editing your comment but the white lines are annoying! — Jor (Talk) 21:37, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'd much rather the correct Unicode letter be used, especially since there's already a picture so the font-impaired can see what it's supposed to look like. Lots of people don't have fonts for Chinese, but that doesn't mean we have to go around replacing 十 with + because they look kinda the same. DopefishJustin 05:16, Apr 21, 2004 (UTC)

On my browser (IE6) all I see is a box. I can see thorn and edh, but yogh doesn't work for me.

I'm on Netscape 7 and I see a question mark or a 3 where the yogh apparently should be. Adam Bishop 21:55 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Font issue, it does not matter what browser you use. Darkelf 00:12, Dec 28, 2003 (UTC)

It is ok to replace the 3's with ȝ's? Or does this make it hard for too many people to read? --Spikey 00:07, 28 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Should be okay. People just have to get Unicode fonts: Arial Unicode MS, Code2000, Junicode and Titus Cyberbit Basic all have a yoch. Arial Unicode MS comes with Office, Code2000 is shareware, but the last two are freeware fonts. — Darkelf 00:12, Dec 28, 2003 (UTC)

actualy most of them don't :-( Jordi·✆ 01:02, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Links: Code2000: license info and download link, Junicode: license info and download link, Titus Cyberbit Basic: license info download link — Darkelf 00:18, Dec 28, 2003 (UTC)

I am on Mozilla Firefox and I see all the yoghs just fine. --142.166.96.192 17:28, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

They don't presently show up in Internet Explorer, which generally treats odd characters like an idiot. I'm changing all the yoghs to show up in Arial Unicode MS—most people have that on their machine already, so they'll be able to see the yoghs even in IE. —Simetrical (talk) 23:18, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wait, take that back. I'm not changing it over. I didn't realize we were using Template:Unicode. However, the fact remains that the characters don't show up in IE. I'll comment over at the template page. —Simetrical (talk) 23:22, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I was the one who added {{Unicode}} here. Yogh works for me now in MSIE. I'll test if there's an easy solution, doubt it however. Jordi·✆ 01:01, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Removed:

ghost is Dutch — from the standpoint of English, the Dutch confuse the letters g and h, so here's a spelling pronounceable in both.

Ghost is not Dutch, nor does it resembled normal Dutch spelling. Gh is not a combination which occurs naturally in Dutch. The Dutch equivalent of Ghost is geest, which is pronounced close to *ghayst. Jordi·✆ 09:38, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You are correct that ghost is not Dutch; however the gh- spelling is from Dutch influence. This was specifically because of the letter e in geest, spelled gheest to make clear it was a hard (historically unpalatalized) G. Then because printing spread to England from the Netherlands, this and a few other quirks slipped in. ~2026-35063-6 (talk) 04:34, 17 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

Can someone give me the Yogh-spellings of the Scots names listed? I am very interested in how a name which doesn't carry a 'Z' sound at all can be spelt that way. Was it really just ignorance based on the glyph's form, as in þe→ye? Jordi·✆ 12:40, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, it was base on the glyph form as some forms of the z had a tail which made it identical to the Yogh. This form has carried over to the cursive handwriting form of the z that we use today.

Yeh, that's right. If you read the <z>s as yoghs, that is the original spelling. Exactly like "ye" in "ye olde alehouse". Maybe that comparison would be useful in the article? --Doric Loon 20:23, 19 April 2006 (UTC)Reply

Despite adding Template:Unicode to this character, Yogh will still not display for most people using Internet Explorer. The problem is that there are just two large Unicode fonts which are likely present on most Windows machines: Lucida Sans Unicode, and Arial Unicode MS (for people who have MS Office). Neither font contains the character, nor do other relatively common (but still obscure) fonts listed by the template, such as Bitstream Cyberbit or its derivant Titus. Going over a relatively clean WindowsXP system (no user fonts installed), I can't find any font which contains yogh. This means that even in better browsers, such as Opera or Firefox, there will be no yoghs displayed. Other than asking people to install a real Unicode font, there does not seem to be a real solution (replacing yoghs with 3s or images is out of the question as far as I'm concerned). Jordi·✆ 01:15, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The yoghs display fine in Firefox, at least for me. I have no idea why—could I have an unusual font installed? I don't have Code2000/Code2001, I know that. —Simetrical (talk) 00:45, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Having large fonts helps, as does using any browser except MSIE. MSIE is fundamentally broken, and cannot change fonts if it encounters characters from certain Unicode ranges unless specifically told to. The Unicode template does just that: it adds a font declaration in such a way that only MSIE applies it (Firefox, Opera, Safari just do what they always do).

You must have some other font which includes a yogh: Firefox is not broken, so it will use a yogh if it knows about a font which contains it. Jordi·✆ 00:58, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't have any fonts on the lists below (#Fonts containing yoghs), but yoghs still show up in Firefox. Are you sure it doesn't have any inbuilt character support? —Simetrical (talk) 04:10, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

100% sure (Firefox is not a font!). I am certain there must be other fonts which contain yoghs, but I don't have any others (at least, character map can't find yoghs in other fonts). Jordi·✆ 08:54, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

These fonts I know contain yoghs:

• Chrysanthi Unicode
• Code2000
• Doulos SIL
• Everson Mono Unicode
• Gentium
• GentiumAlt
• Junicode
• TITUS Cyberbit Basic (new version)

These fonts do NOT contain a Yogh:

• Arial Unicode MS
• Bitstream Cyberbit

Jordi·✆ 01:17, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Lucida Grande has it. Evertype 09:17, 2005 Mar 30 (UTC)

• Bitstream Vera doesn't have yogh either. --KelisFan2K5 22:08, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Three more fonts that contain the yogh:

• Cardo
• Thryomanes
• Free Mono

For the moment, I'm lackng a sans-serif font with yogh. --chryss 02:52, 12 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

The yogh, Ȝ, appears fine on the Yogh article page and when I paste it into my Windows XP notepad. However when I was sourcing The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology for a Proto-Germanic constructed form of 'God' which used a yogh, and added it under the 'etymology' heading in the wikipedia article 'God', it simply appears as this block. It shouldn't have to do with the font, as it appears fine in this article (& in notepad), but not in the java page editing area for wikipedia. Any help? Nagelfar 11:59, 2 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

It is actually the font. Try using {{unicode|Ȝ}} instead, which shows up as Ȝ in contrast to Ȝ. It mightn't show up all nifty-like in the edit box, but when you view it, it will. It's got to do with how Internet Explorer on Windows handles fonts; the Unicode template sets some specific fonts when using IE, but is specially designed so that other browsers ignore it. Another option that'll make it work for you is to use Mozilla Firefox or some related browser, but for the benefit of IE-users, you'll still need the template. —Felix the Cassowary (ɑe hɪː jɐ) 13:36, 2 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

My thanks Cassowary, it appears you're correct as I cannot change the font here in IE. But the {{unicode|etc}} was indeed the command I sought and explains why it appears. My thanks again. Nagelfar 16:13, 4 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

The page says that the ME spelling of the letter was "ȝogh". I am not an expert, but given the information contained in the rest of the article, and my limited external knowledge, I would have expected "ȝoȝ". Can anyone comment on this?

Rdr0 22:11, 3 December 2005 (UTC)Reply

I put the spelling 'ȝogh' in. It was a surprise to me as well; when I didn't know how it was spelled, I thought it to be yoȝ. Ȝogh, however, is the prior spelling given in the Oxford English Dictionary. (I'm sure of the spelling, but I'm not entirely sure of the reference—it has been several years since I've had access to look it up. If someone can verify it that'd be great.) —Muke Tever talk (la.wiktionary) 20:59, 8 December 2005 (UTC)Reply

> Very funny, I thought th same thing myself, but only momentarily. Actually, I'm curious as to how it's pronounced, maybe I skimmed over any given pronunciation, but I thought it's either homonymous w/ "yoe" or "rogue." That is, is it 3og3 or 3o3? Essentially, I wonder if the is "g" is distinctly pronounced.

>>I don't know for sure, but given what I know about the history of the English language, I would have assumed that the "gh" was pronounced as a voiceless velar fricative, as in the German "Ach-laut." 71.214.134.239 03:30, 7 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Whee, the online OED has been giving out free access occasionally. Okay, the word is given as pronounced /jɒɡ/ or /jɒx/ in British English, so yes, g or ach-laut. The spelling of this word doesn't seem to have been set: the earliest quotation they have, c1300, has yoȝ, and later: a1400 yogh (variant readings: ȝogh, iogh, ȝok), 1410-20 ȝogh (variant readings: ȝoch, ȝoche, ȝoghe, ȝouh, yowh, yough, ȝouȝ, ȝowȝe, ȝow, ȝoux, youx), 14xx yogh. It's also Latinized as iugum in 1440 which the OED takes as translating an underlying 'ȝok' (iugum = yoke). —Muke Tever talk (la.wiktionary) 18:01, 7 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Why not? After all, the Scots use the letter z in place of letters that would otherwise be used by other English speakers. I'm sure otherwise will argue the reverse, make Scots adopt a universal spelling; if for no other reason, because it makes things easier for the rest of us. I contend, however, that there is something to say for posterity, but more importantly I think the fulcrum point of the arguments rests on the fact that English is already a very difficult language to read and write. There is also a direct correlation between pronunciation and spelling. I think ressurecting Eth and Thorn would prove confusing; however, I see potential for 3/Yough as a clarifier. Furthermore, I think it would be an easy letter to adopt. With the percentage of native speakers going to school - not only at a very early age, but also going on to further education - and the widespread use of computers, I can forsee instant exposure and means for usage. Finally, with the staggering number of non-native speakers (globally) now learning English - which has no shortage of confounding spellings and, in turn, pronunciations - the letter 3/Yogh would ease their already burdensome task.

As postscript, I feel that other changes would be excessive. Changes such as reverting to the orginal pronunciations of vowels (ei: adopting Continental vowel pronunciation, thus pronouncing most words as they did in Chaucer's time)or changing they way we spell words so that they become phonetically appropriate (ex: night becomes nite). The former would certainly help Europeans, and those who speak some European langauge other than English as a first language, but it would be appreciated even more by the number of Latin American immigrants coming to America as un-skilled laborers looking for jobs; the latter would help any young student struggling with his first book or her first writing assignment - not to mention their teachers. Still, I feel that such changes would be too drastic and if they were once feasible they are no longer. I also understand that there could be difficulties in waking 3/Yough from its dormancy, I just can't forsee those difficulties out numbering or out weighing the attributes.

Thou3ts...

Yeah, I've always thouȝht that using yoȝh would be excellent to replace the silent G's in English, such as in reiȝn, thouȝht, riȝht, aliȝn, and so forth. The best way to revive, is throuȝh usage. So let's get to it. —Ƿōdenhelm (talk) 13:18, 11 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

As long as we can start using voiceless 'th' with thorn-runes and voiced with 'eth' characters again. Then a separate character for long and short Oes & Aes. ;-p 70.59.142.186 (talk) 04:41, 5 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

We (English speakers) never had that distinction between Þ and Ð. They were interchangeable. Hurlebatte (talk) 03:46, 31 January 2020 (UTC)Reply

I removed the following line from the top of the page:

The word yogh has sometimes been used as a colloquial backformed verb meaning "for milk to become yoghurt".

for two reasons: (1) the claim is unsourced, (2) sourced or not it's a neologism and a dicdef. Angr/talk 10:59, 17 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

The HTML <font> element has been deprecated for a very long time (at least since HTML 4.01 in 1997). Modern HTML should always use CSS instead. Is there any reason to use it instead of {{Unicode}}? Hairy Dude 22:43, 15 March 2006 (UTC)Reply

I insterted the <font> tags because the unicode template wasn't working to display the characters. The only font I know of that displays the yogh is Microsoft Sans Serif.--Primetime 06:28, 16 March 2006 (UTC)Reply

Explicitly specifing a font would be an unreasonable compromise, as only Windows+IE suffers from Unicode problems, and this overrides the font on all other broser/OS combinations. It is strange that Arial Unicode and Lucidia Sans Unicode do not include that character, while Microsoft Sans Serif does. To have this character displayed corretly I suggest you install the (free) Gentium font. I will see if Microsoft Sans Serif can be given a giher priority than Arial Unicode or maybe fork {{unicode}} to a separate template for Middle English. —Ruud 18:42, 2 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

I don't know about your browser, but it displays OK in both Opera as well as IE on my computer with the font tags. My view is that we should make it visible to the most readers possible. So, it has nothing to do with me seeing it but allowing the majority of other people to see it. Your suggestion to install a font is of no use to them. We shouldn't make it invisible to IE + Windows users in order to make it visible to Macintosh or Linux users.--Primetime 19:23, 2 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

Your reasoning is flawed, as this means we should images for every non-ASCII character (with a proper alt-tag of course). My point is that this particular solution is not acceptable (deprecated, not portable and creates and much problems as it solves, as I doubt the number of Win2K/WinXP+IE users that are viewing this articles is that much larger than the Win9x/MacOS/Linux/Firefox users. —Ruud 20:47, 2 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

Microsoft Internet Explorer had an 89% market share of the web browser market in 2004.^[1] So, no we shouldn't make it invisible for 90% of our readers. As for other technical issues, can you be more specific? As for a precedent, the only time I've ever had to use the tag is here.--Primetime 00:49, 3 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

• Looks good.--Primetime 03:15, 3 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

I added the Unicode values, which were not to be found anywhere on the page despite the comment is present "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." At first I put them into that sentence, but then decided they belonged up in the top section -- certainly they have at least as good a right to be there as the Microsoft Office input method!

ISTM that any article about a character should include its Unicode codepoint(s) as a matter of course

Thnidu 01:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

In the Old English period, the ȝ glyph was simply the way Latin g was written in the Uncial script introduced at the Christianization of England by the Irish missionaries. It only came to be used as a letter distinct from g in the Middle English period.

This is not quite right. ȝ per se was not used at all in the OE period; the Uncial letter was strictly an Insular G: ᵹ. Yes, yogh developed from insular G (as did regular G), but they are not the same character. Widsith (talk) 09:44, 5 August 2008 (UTC)Reply

Not the same character, but yogh was indeed used as a sound in speech. Both yogh and gee were represented with a singular glyph: G. Is there actually a G in "align"? Go ahead and speak the word. —Ƿōdenhelm (talk) 13:20, 11 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

"Yogh" is not a sound. It's the name of a character, one which wasn't used in OE. The sound of yogh was used in Old English; it is also used in modern English, but that is not the point and it's not what the article says. Widsith (talk) 21:53, 17 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

Widsith is, of course, entirely correct here. -- Evertype·✆ 01:14, 18 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

There is no proper reference given for the French Egyptologists specifying Yogh for the Alef. -- Evertype·✆ 09:46, 22 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

It seesm the article gives the Runic Gifu as a possible origin, but I'm wondering if it would be more logical that ᛃ (or jera) be it's origin, both through the sound of the rune, and its shape. ~Alosel~ | ^(Talk) 20:15, 17 June 2009 (UTC)Reply

Yough comes from the insular G, not a rune (though I've heard it speculated that Yough's name comes from ᛇ). Also, ᛃ no longer had that shape when Yough was invented. Hurlebatte (talk) 03:49, 31 January 2020 (UTC)Reply

That's by far not all of the words that contain a yogh?! For a starter, check this out! More Yogh words than you can ever imagine. -andy 77.7.97.125 (talk) 20:51, 18 December 2010 (UTC)Reply

Why is an American pronunciation listed for a letter that is from Middle English and was defunct in English before America was even colonised? There cannot be an American pronunciation of a letter that isn't American.--Jcvamp (talk) 22:09, 16 December 2012 (UTC)Reply

An IP editor made a good-faith edit changing

Yogh is shaped similarly to the Arabic numeral three (3)

to

Yogh is shaped similarly to the Arabic letter Ayin (ع), an unvoiced pharyngeal fricative

I have reverted that edit. The original sentence really was meant to refer to the digit 3 in the system of Hindu-Arabic numerals (often called just "Arabic numerals")—

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9.

— not to the Arabic letter ayin, which coincidentally looks like a mirror-image "3" or yogh. I have added this fact about ayin in a separate sentence. --Thnidu (talk) 03:55, 12 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

An IP editor changed the last word of the caption of the graphic at the top of the History section from "inolk" to "inow", matching the caption that is part of the graphic in the source, even though the scribe's black-letter text is a lot closer to "inolk" than to "inow". The earlier (print) transcriber (presumably Shaw, see details on graphic) took other liberties in presenting the text as "God Spede ye Plough and send us Korne enow": most notably "gh" for "ȝ", but also "and" for an and symbol closer to an ampersand or plus sign, capital letters other than on "God", and "e" for "i" in the last word. Presumably this was in the interest of making the words clearer to his readers than the much older spelling would have done. I have restored the "lk". -- Thnidu (talk) 16:53, 20 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

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• Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20120404033426/http://www.dsl.ac.uk/getent4.php?plen=3250&startset=48908654&query=Z&fhit=z&dregion=form&dtext=snd to http://www.dsl.ac.uk/getent4.php?plen=3250&startset=48908654&query=Z&fhit=z&dregion=form&dtext=snd#fhit

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Checked, okay, changed parameter. --Thnidu (talk) 00:30, 21 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

Several {{Citation}} references used "title" for the name of the work and "contribution" for the name of the page referenced. I have corrected these. See Template:Citation. --Thnidu (talk) 03:25, 13 September 2018 (UTC)Reply

I can't really see the case for inclusion of the surname Layamon in the list of Scots word that use <z> instead of ⟨ȝ⟩. Firstly, it doesn't contain a <z> nor does the name appear to be Scottish. 130.209.97.39 (talk) 11:22, 29 April 2019 (UTC)Reply

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect YoȜ. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. 1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 21:30, 15 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

Yogh was generally used for /j/ rather than y.

That’s more than a bit ambiguous. What exactly is meant here? ⌘ 17:50, 25 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

Shouldn’t the hatnote also mention the Cyrillic letter ze? I don’t know how to use wikilink yet if you’re wondering why I didn’t just fix it myself

Jammy Sammy

2601:189:4602:3040:B98C:8823:E0C4:EFAF (talk) 02:55, 8 September 2025 (UTC)Reply

It appears to be a positional variant of the letter G derived from its form in the insular script. Is there any reason why we are considering this to be its own letter rather than a variant of G, like how we consider the long S to be a variant of S? Also positional variants were very common at the time, in addition to the long S the letters J and U were formerly positional variants of I and V respectively. 2607:FEA8:86DF:FD5C:5DEB:2CC3:4402:82A0 (talk) 04:02, 1 November 2025 (UTC)Reply