Ž

Transliterations Cyrillic, Glagolitic, Latin, Polish, Perso-ArabicOtherAssociated numbers13, 27, 33Writing directionLeft-to-RightThis article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see . For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

The grapheme Ž (minuscule: ž) is formed from Latin Z with the addition of caron (Czech: háček, Slovak: mäkčeň, Slovene: strešica, Serbo-Croatian: kvačica). It is used in various contexts, usually denoting the voiced postalveolar fricative, the sound of English g in mirage, s in vision, or Portuguese and French j. In the International Phonetic Alphabet this sound is denoted with [ʒ], but the lowercase ž is used in the Americanist phonetic notation, as well as in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet. In addition, ž is used as the romanisation of Cyrillic ж in ISO 9 and scientific transliteration.

For use in computer systems, Ž and ž are at Unicode codepoints U+017D and U+017E, respectively. On Windows computers, it can be typed with Alt+0142 and Alt+0158, respectively.

Ž is the last letter of most alphabets that contain it, but exceptions include Estonian, Karelian, Veps, and Turkmen.