Zemlya (Cyrillic)
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Ze (З з; italics: ''З'' ''з'') is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It commonly represents the voiced alveolar fricative , 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 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 Ustav may refer to: * Typikon, liturgical book in Byzantine Rite churches * , the uncial style of early Cyrillic writing, used from the 9th century to the 14th-15th centuries. This evolved into ' (semi-uncial, a type still in use for the Church S ...
( uncial) writing style; з appeared in the later poluustav ( half-uncial) 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). Russian scribes and typographers largely abandoned the widespread use of the variant in favor of з in the wake of Patriarch Nikon'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 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 ...
(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 (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 types ...
(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 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

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References

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