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The strangest letter of the alphabet: The rise and fall of yogh

https://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/history-of-letter-yogh
35•penetralium•1h ago

Comments

o11c•37m ago
Yogh is indeed strange. Wynn is the most irritating loss though; couldn't we have at least kept the name rather than "double-yoo"?
mminer237•26m ago
That would be convenient. Microsoft would have had to rename the ⊞ key then lol.
specproc•37m ago
The old English 'ᵹ' has visual similarities with the Georgian 'გ', also our 'g'.

We've two letters that are visually similar to yogh 'ȝ': 'ვ' (an English 'v', or 'w' if you're Tbliseli), and 'პ' (a hard 'p'). Our 'gh' sound is 'ღ'.

choult•31m ago
In the UK, yogh existed in Scotland a while longer than in England. You can observe it still in the name Menzies which is pronounced Ming-is there - the z in place of the yogh.

In the last week, our most famous Menzies passed away - politician Sir "Ming" Campbell.

jgtrosh•21m ago
That's /ˈmɪŋɪs/,/ˈmɪŋɡɪs/ for anyone wondering
zabzonk•4m ago
The newsagent chain Menzies was also pronounced Ming-is.
samgutentag•20m ago
"English spelling has a reputation. And it’s not a good one." - never have i ever agreed with anything more

different hill, but one I would die on is: as the letter "c" should make the "ch" sound, the letter "c" serves no purpose not already handled by "s" or "k" otherwise

arkensaw•5m ago
> It’s full of silent letters, as in numb, knee, and honour. A given sound can be spelled in multiple ways (farm, laugh, photo), and many letters make multiple sounds (get, gist, mirage).

that last one is hardly fair - gist and mirage are french words. might as well complain about the silent letters in rendezvous or faux pas.

user982•3m ago
But which "ch" sound? "Ch" as in "church" is just "tsh".
zcdziura•3m ago
I completely agree with you. I've taken an amateurish interest in linguistics over the past couple of years, and I've often thought that it might be a fun exercise to come up with a phonetic alphabet for the English language. Use the letter 'c' to represent /ch/, 'x' to represent /sh/, etc.

Maybe as a fun pet project someday!

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