Ze (З з; italics:
''З'' ''з'') is a letter of the
Cyrillic script
The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, ...
.
It commonly represents the
voiced alveolar fricative
The voiced alveolar fricatives are consonantal sounds. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents these sounds depends on whether a sibilant or non-sibilant fricative is being described.
* The symbol for the alveolar sibilant ...
, like the pronunciation of in "zebra".
''Ze is romanized using the Latin letter'' .
The shape of Ze is
very similar to the
Arabic numeral three , and should not be confused with the
Cyrillic letter E .
History and shape
Ze is derived from the
Greek letter Zeta (Ζ ζ).
In the
Early Cyrillic alphabet
The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is a writing system that was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the late 9th century on the basis of the Greek alphabet for the Slavic people living ...
its name was (''zemlja''), meaning "earth". The shape of the letter originally looked similar to a Greek or Latin letter Z with a tail on the bottom (). Though a majuscule form of this variant () is encoded in Unicode, historically it was only used as caseless or lowercase.
[Ponomar Project. ''The Complete Character Range for Slavonic Script in Unicode.'']
In the
Cyrillic numeral system
Cyrillic numerals are a numeral system derived from the Cyrillic script, developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the late 10th century. It was used in the First Bulgarian Empire and by South and East Slavic peoples. The system was used in R ...
, Zemlja had a value of 7.
Medieval Cyrillic manuscripts and Church Slavonic printed books have two variant forms of the letter Zemlja: з and . Only the form was used in the oldest
ustav (
uncial
Uncial is a majuscule Glaister, Geoffrey Ashall. (1996) ''Encyclopedia of the Book''. 2nd edn. New Castle, DE, and London: Oak Knoll Press & The British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one ...
) writing style; з appeared in the later
poluustav (
half-uncial
Uncial is a majuscule Glaister, Geoffrey Ashall. (1996) ''Encyclopedia of the Book''. 2nd edn. New Castle, DE, and London: Oak Knoll Press & The British Library, p. 494. script (written entirely in capital letters) commonly used from the 4th t ...
) manuscripts and typescripts, where the two variants are found at proportions of about 1:1.
Some early grammars tried to give a phonetic distinction to these forms (like palatalized vs. nonpalatalized sound), but the system had no further development.
Ukrainian
Ukrainian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Ukraine
* Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe
* Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine
* So ...
scribes and typographers began to regularly use З/з in an initial position, and otherwise (a system in use till the end of the 19th century).
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
n scribes and typographers largely abandoned the widespread use of the variant in favor of з in the wake of
Patriarch Nikon
Nikon ( ru , Ни́кон, Old Russian: ''Нїконъ''), born Nikita Minin (''Никита Минин''; 7 May 1605 – 17 August 1681) was the seventh Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus' of the Russian Orthodox Church, serving officially from ...
's reforms.
They still used the older form mostly in the case of two З's in row: (the system in use till the mid-18th century).
The
civil (Petrine) script knows only one shape of the letter: З/з. However, shapes similar to Z/z can be used in certain stylish typefaces.
In calligraphy and in general handwritten text, lowercase з can be written either fully over the baseline (similar to the printed form) or with the lower half under the baseline and with the loop (for the Russian language, a standard shape since the middle of the 20th century).
Phonetic value
The letter Ze may represent:
* , the
voiced alveolar sibilant (Macedonian, Bulgarian, Bosnian, Serbian, Montenegrin, Russian, Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian);
* , if followed by or any of the
palatalizing vowels, as in Russian зеркало (“mirror”);
* , the
voiceless alveolar sibilant
The voiceless alveolar fricatives are a type of fricative consonant pronounced with the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge (gum line) just behind the teeth. This refers to a class of sounds, not a single sound. There are at leas ...
(in final position or before voiceless consonants);
* , if followed by in final position or before voiceless consonants;
* or (Iron dialect of
Ossetian, but in Digoron and Kudairag);
* clusters and are pronounced in Russian as if they were and , respectively (even if is the last letter of a preposition, like in Russian без жены “without wife” or из школы “from school”);
* cluster (sometimes also ) is pronounced in Russian as if it was (рассказчик “narrator”, звёздчатый “stellar, star-shaped”, без чая “without tea”);
* cluster can be pronounced (mostly in Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian) as the
voiced alveolar affricate
A voiced alveolar affricate is a type of affricate consonant pronounced with the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge (gum line) just behind the teeth. This refers to a class of sounds, not a single sound. There are several typ ...
(Ukrainian дзеркало “mirror”) or its palatalized form (Belarusian гадзіннік “clock”), but if and belong to different morphemes, then they are pronounced separately. In the standard Iron dialect of Ossetian, this cluster simply stands for ; other dialects treat it as the affricate .
* , the
voiceless alveolar affricate
A voiceless alveolar affricate is a type of affricate consonant pronounced with the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge (gum line) just behind the teeth. This refers to a class of sounds, not a single sound. There are several type ...
in
Mongolian.
З-shaped Latin letters
Zhuang
A letter that looks like Cyrillic Ze (actually, a stylization of digit 3) was used in the Latin
Zhuang alphabet
Standard Zhuang (autonym: , , (pre-1982: ; Sawndip: ); ) is the official standardized form of the Zhuang languages, which are a branch of the Northern Tai languages. Its pronunciation is based on that of the Yongbei Zhuang dialect of Shuangq ...
from 1957 to 1986 to represent the third (high)
tone. In 1986, it was replaced by .
Other related letters and similar characters
*3 :
Digit Three
*Ζ ζ :
Greek letter Zeta
*Z z :
Latin letter Z
*Ʒ ʒ :
Latin letter Ezh
*Ȝ ȝ :
Latin letter Yogh
*Ɜ ɜ :
Latin letter reversed open E
*Ҙ ҙ :
Cyrillic letter Dhe or Ze with descender
*Ӡ ӡ :
Cyrillic letter Abkhazian Dze
*Ԑ ԑ :
Cyrillic letter Reversed Ze
Computing codes
External links
*
*
References
{{Authority control