Insular G

Insular G (majuscule: Ᵹ, minuscule: ᵹ) is a form of the letter g somewhat resembling an ezh, used in the medieval insular script of Great Britain and Ireland. It was first used in the Roman Empire in Roman cursive, then it appeared in Irish half uncial (insular) script, and after it had passed into Old English, it developed into the Middle English letter yogh (Ȝ ȝ). Middle English, having reborrowed the familiar Carolingian g from the Continent, began to use the two forms of g as separate letters.

Insular G

Insular G on font lines

Carolingian G

Letter

Insular G on an inscription in Newcastlewest, Ireland

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. Few fonts will display all of the symbols, but some will display the lowercase insular g (ᵹ) and the tironian et (⁊). Two fonts that support the other characters are Junicode and Tehuti.

The relationship between different fonts, showing the development of the minuscule

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 1.^ As of Unicode version 16.0 2.^ These characters are spread across the following Unicode blocks: Combining Diacritical Marks Extended (U 1AB0–U 1AFF), Phonetic Extensions (U 1D00–U 1D7F), Combining Diacritical Marks Supplement (U 1DC0–U 1DFF), General Punctuation (U 2000–U 206F), Supplemental Punctuation (U 2E00-U 2E7F), and Latin Extended-D (U A720–U A7FF)

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

Turned insular g

A turned version of insular g (Ꝿ ꝿ) was used by William Pryce to designate the velar nasal ŋ.

See also

• Insular script

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.