Ezh (Ʒ ʒ) , also called the "tailed z", is a letter whose lower case form is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), representing the voiced postalveolar fricative consonant. For example, the pronunciation of "si" in ''vision'' and ''precision'' , or the " s" in ''treasure'' . See also the letter Ž as used in many Slavic languages, the Persian alphabet letter ژ, the Cyrillic letter Ж, and the

Esperanto 





Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken  constructed  international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based  ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...

letter Ĵ. Ezh is also used as a letter in some orthographies of Laz and Skolt Sami, both by itself, and with a caron ( Ǯ ǯ). In Laz, these represent voiceless alveolar affricate and its ejective counterpart , respectively. In Skolt Sami they respectively denote partially voiced alveolar and post-alveolar affricates, broadly represented and . It also appears in the orthography of some African languages, for example in the Aja language of

Benin 





Benin ( ,  ; french: Bénin ,  ff, Benen), officially the Republic of Benin (french: République du Bénin), and formerly  Dahomey, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the north ...

and the Dagbani language of

Ghana 






Ghana (;  tw, Gaana,  ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with  Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in  the north, and To ...

, where the uppercase variant looks like a reflected sigma ( Σ).

Origin

As a phonetic symbol, it originates with

Isaac Pitman Sir Isaac Pitman (4 January 1813 – 22 January 1897) was a teacher of the :English language who developed the most widely used system of shorthand, known now as Pitman shorthand. He first proposed this in ''Stenographic Soundhand'' in 183 ...

English Phonotypic Alphabet The English Phonotypic Alphabet is a phonetic alphabet developed by Sir Isaac Pitman and Alexander John Ellis originally as an English language spelling reform. Although never gaining wide acceptance, elements of it were incorporated into th ...

in 1847, as a ''z'' with an added hook. The symbol is based on medieval cursive forms of Latin z, evolving into the

blackletter Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norweg ...

z letter. In Unicode, however, the blackletter ("

tailed z Z (or z) is the 26th and last Letter (alphabet), letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its usual names in English are English ...

" , German ) is considered a glyph variant of ''z'', and not an ezh. Humanist

Gian Giorgio Trissino Gian Giorgio Trissino (8 July 1478 – 8 December 1550), also called Giovan Giorgio Trissino and self-styled as Giovan Giωrgio Trissino, was a Venetian Renaissance humanist, poet, dramatist, diplomat, grammarian, linguist, and philosopher. ...

proposed in 1524 a reform of

Italian orthography Italian orthography (writing) uses a variant of the Latin alphabet consisting of 21 letters to write the Italian language. This article focuses on the writing of Standard Italian, based historically on the Florentine dialect. Italian orthography ...

introducing ezh as an uppercase for the sound. In contexts where "tailed z" is used in contrast to tail-less ''z'', notably in standard transcription of

Middle High German Middle High German (MHG; german: Mittelhochdeutsch (Mhd.)) is the term for the form of German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High German and into Early New High German. High ...

, Unicode ʒ is sometimes used, strictly speaking incorrectly. Unicode offers ȥ "z with hook" as a grapheme for Middle High German coronal fricative instead.

Similar shapes

Relation to yogh

In Unicode 1.0, the character was unified with the unrelated character

yogh The letter yogh (ȝogh) ( ; Scots Language, Scots: ; Middle English: ) was used in Middle English and Older Scots, representing ''y'' () and various velar consonant , velar phonemes. It was derived from the Insular G, Insular form of the letter ...

(), which was not correctly added to Unicode until Unicode 3.0. Historically, ezh is derived from Latin z, but yogh is derived from Latin g by way of

insular G Insular G (font: Ᵹ ᵹ) is a form of the letter g somewhat resembling a tailed z, 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 ...

(and incidentally giving rise to the English mispronunciation of the Scottish surname nd business

Menzies Menzies is a Scottish surname, with Gaelic forms being Méinnearach and Méinn, and other variant forms being Menigees, Mennes, Mengzes, Menzeys, Mengies, and Minges. Derivation and history The name and its Gaelic form are probably derived f ...

as instead of ). The characters look very similar and do not appear alongside each other in any alphabet. To differentiate between the two more clearly, the

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

and the

Early English Text Society The Early English Text Society (EETS) is a text publication society founded in 1864 which is dedicated to the editing and publication of early English texts, especially those only available in manuscript. Most of its volumes contain editions of ...

extend the uppermost tip of the 'yogh' into a little curvature upward.

Relation to the digit three

The ezh looks similar to the common form of the figure three (3). To differentiate between the two characters, Ezh includes the sharp zigzag of the letter z, while the number is usually curved. This still remains a problem though, as some type fonts (found on clock faces among other things) use a figure for "3" identical in shape to an ezh. In the Cyrillic script handwritings, the digit 3 is written as an Ezh to distinguish it from the letter Ze.

Similarity to hiragana ro

Ezh looks similar to ろ, the Japanese hiragana letter for the

mora Mora may refer to: People * Mora (surname) Places Sweden * Mora, Säter, Sweden * Mora, Sweden, the seat of Mora Municipality * Mora Municipality, Sweden United States * Mora, Louisiana, an unincorporated community * Mora, Minnesota, a city * M ...

"ro". However, the central corner of ろ points out further away to the left than that of ezh.

Vague ties to the Cyrillic 'Ze'

The Cyrillic letter Ze, written as З (capitalized) or з (Lower Case), has a similar body to Ezh. As customary, the Cyrillic script has a stiffer structure, but both letters have common roots in historical cursive forms of 'Z', taken from the Greek letter

Zeta Zeta (, ; uppercase Ζ, lowercase ζ; grc, ζῆτα, el, ζήτα, label= Demotic Greek, classical or ''zē̂ta''; ''zíta'') is the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 7. It was derived f ...

. The pronunciations of Latin Ezh and Cyrillic Ze, however, are different phonemes: while /ʒ/ stands for the ''s'' in the word ''vision'', Russian Ze (З) stands for ''z'' as in ''zebra''. For the /ʒ/ phoneme, Cyrillic uses the letter Zhe (Ж). Older Russian

typewriter A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...

s, often to save space, sometimes used З (Ze) to write the numeral form of 3.

Usage

Language orthographies

Trissino's reform did not prosper in relation to the . In the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...

(IPA) it represents the

voiced postalveolar fricative A voiced postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The International Phonetic Association uses term ''voiced postalveolar fricative'' only for the sound , but it also describes the voiced postalveolar ...

consonant. For example: ''vision'' . It is pronounced as the "s" in "treasure" or the "si" in the word "precision". It is used with that value in

Uropi Uropi is a constructed language which was created by Joël Landais, a French English teacher. Uropi is a synthesis of European languages, explicitly based on the common Indo-European roots and aims at being used as an international auxiliary la ...

. It is used in the "International Standard" orthography, as devised by Marcel Courthiade for

Romani Romani may refer to: Ethnicities * Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia ** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule * Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...

. It was also used in an obsolete Latin alphabet for writing Komi, where it represented (similar to English ''j''). In the modern Cyrillic alphabet, this sound is written as ''дз''. Also during Latinisation in the USSR was used in the project of

Unified Northern Alphabet The Unified Northern Alphabet (UNA) (russian: Единый северный алфавит) was created during the Latinisation in the Soviet Union for the Indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East, "small" language ...

and other alphabets of the people of the Soviet Union during the 1920–1930s.

Ezh as an abbreviation for dram

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

, a standard designed to allow symbols from all writing systems to be represented and manipulated by computers, the ezh (alternatively ℨ) is used as the symbol to represent the abbreviation for

dram Dynamic random-access memory (dynamic RAM or DRAM) is a type of random-access semiconductor memory that stores each bit of data in a memory cell, usually consisting of a tiny capacitor and a transistor, both typically based on metal-oxid ...

, an

apothecaries' system The apothecaries' system, or apothecaries' weights and measures, is a historical system of mass and volume units that were used by physicians and apothecaries for medical prescriptions and also sometimes by scientists."Medicinal-Gewicht, Apotheke ...

unit Unit may refer to: Arts and entertainment * UNIT, a fictional military organization in the science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'' * Unit of action, a discrete piece of action (or beat) in a theatrical presentation Music * ''Unit'' (alb ...

mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...

Encoding and ligatures

The

code points are U+01B7 for Ʒ and U+0292 for ʒ. The IPA historically allowed for ezh to be ligatured to other letters; some of these ligatures have been added to the Unicode standard. *Dezh ( ʤ) ligatures ezh with the letter D (U+02A4). *Lezh ( ɮ) ligatures ezh with the letter L (U+026E). *Tezh ( tʒ) (uppercase form TƷ) ligatures ezh with the letter T (U+A728 for Ꜩ and U+A729 for ꜩ). Related obsolete IPA characters include and . and are also used for phonetic transcription. is used in the

Uralic Phonetic Alphabet The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) or Finno-Ugric transcription system is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of Uralic languages. It was first published in 1901 by Eemil Nesto ...

. was previously used in the

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...

Typing character

For Mac: Option⌥ + :, followed by Shift+Z or Z respectively.

References

External links

Michael Everson Michael Everson (born January 9, 1963) is an American and Irish linguist, script encoder, typesetter, type designer and publisher. He runs a publishing company called Evertype, through which he has published over a hundred books since 2006. His ...

's essa
On the derivation of Yogh and Ezh
{{DEFAULTSORT:Z - Ezh Phonetic transcription symbols Latin-script letters