Insular G

Shape of Insular G

Insular G () is a form of the letter g resembling a tailed z, developed in Ireland in the 7th century. It was first used by the Irish, and passed into Old English, and developed into the Middle English letter yogh; Middle English, having reborrowed the familiar Carolingian g from the Continent, thus used two forms of g as separate letters.

The lowercase insular g was used in Irish linguistics as a phonetic character for the voiced velar fricative, IPA /ɣ/, and on this basis is encoded in the Phonetic Extensions block of Unicode as of March 2005 as U+1D79: ᵹ.

The insular form of g is still used in traditional Gaelic script.

See also

• Gaelic script
• Insular script
• Yogh

External links

• Drawing an insular G (here mistaken for yogh)
• On the derivation of YOGH and EZH shows insular g in several typefaces.