Insular G
![Shape of Insular G](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Insular_G.svg/220px-Insular_G.svg.png)
Insular G (font: Ᵹ ᵹ; image: ) is a form of the letter g used in Insular fonts somewhat resembling a tailed z or lowercase delta, used in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It was first used by the Irish, passed into Old English, and developed into the Middle English letter yogh (Ȝ ȝ). Middle English, having re-borrowed the familiar Carolingian g from the Continent, thus used two forms of g as separate letters.
Letter
The lowercase insular g (ᵹ) was used in Irish linguistics as a phonetic character for [ɣ], and on this basis is encoded in the Phonetic Extensions block of Unicode 4.1 (March 2005) as U+1D79. Its capital (Ᵹ) was introduced in Unicode 5.1 (April 2008) at U+A77D. The insular g is one of several insular letters encoded into Unicode but few fonts will display all of these symbols although some will display the lowercase insular g (ᵹ) and the tironian et (⁊). One font that supports the other characters is Junicode.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Evolution_of_minuscule.svg/467px-Evolution_of_minuscule.svg.png)
Insular letters in Unicode[1][2] | ||||||||||||||||
0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | |
U+1ACx | ◌ᫌ | ◌ᫍ | ◌ᫎ | |||||||||||||
U+1D7x | ᵹ | |||||||||||||||
U+1DDx | ◌ᷘ | |||||||||||||||
U+204x | ⁊ | |||||||||||||||
U+2E5x | ⹒ | |||||||||||||||
U+A77x | Ꝺ | ꝺ | Ꝼ | ꝼ | Ᵹ | Ꝿ | ꝿ | |||||||||
U+A78x | Ꞃ | ꞃ | Ꞅ | ꞅ | Ꞇ | ꞇ | ||||||||||
U+A7Dx | Ꟑ | ꟑ | ||||||||||||||
Notes
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The insular form of g is still used in traditional Gaelic script.
See also
External links
- Drawing an insular G (here mistaken for yogh)
- Michael Everson's article On the derivation of YOGH and EZH shows insular g in several typefaces.