Ż, ż (Z with overdot) is a letter, consisting of the letter Z of the ISO basic Latin alphabet and an overdot.
Z with overdot | |
---|---|
Ż ż | |
Usage | |
Type | alphabetic |
Language of origin | Polish |
Phonetic usage | [ʐ], [ʂ], [ʒ], [z], [ð], [dð~dz] |
Alphabetical position | 32 |
History | |
Development |
|
Transliteration equivalents | Ƶ ƶ |
Other | |
In the Polish language, ż is the final, 32nd letter of the alphabet. It typically represents the voiced retroflex fricative ([ʐ]), somewhat similar to the pronunciation of ⟨g⟩ in "mirage"; however, in a word-final position or when followed by a voiceless obstruent, it is devoiced to the voiceless retroflex fricative ([ʂ]).
Its pronunciation is the same as that of the digraph ⟨rz⟩, except that ⟨rz⟩ (unlike ⟨ż⟩) also undergoes devoicing when preceded by a voiceless obstruent. The difference in spelling comes from their historical pronunciations: ż originates from a palatalized /ɡ/ or /z/, while ⟨rz⟩ evolved from a palatalized ⟨r⟩.
The letter was originally introduced in 1513 by Stanisław Zaborowski in his book Ortographia.
Occasionally, the letter Ƶ ƶ (Z with a horizontal stroke) is used instead of Ż ż for aesthetic purposes, especially in all-caps text and handwriting.
Kashubian ż is a voiced fricative like in Polish, but it is postalveolar ([ʒ]) rather than retroflex.
In Maltese, ż represents the voiced alveolar sibilant [z], pronounced like "z" in English "maze". This contrasts with the letter ⟨z⟩, which represents the voiceless alveolar sibilant affricate [ts], like in the word "hats".
Character | Ż | ż | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z WITH DOT ABOVE | LATIN SMALL LETTER Z WITH DOT ABOVE | ||
character encoding | decimal | hex | decimal | hex |
Unicode | 379 | 017B | 380 | 017C |
UTF-8 | 197 187 | C5 BB | 197 188 | C5 BC |
Numeric character reference | Ż | Ż | ż | ż |
CP 852 | 189 | BD | 190 | BE |
CP 775 | 163 | A3 | 164 | A4 |
Mazovia | 161 | A1 | 167 | A7 |
Windows-1250, ISO-8859-2 | 175 | AF | 191 | BF |
Windows-1257, ISO-8859-13 | 221 | DD | 253 | FD |
Mac Central European | 251 | FB | 253 | FD |
This article uses material from the Wikipedia English article Ż, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
®Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wiki Foundation, Inc. Wiki English (DUHOCTRUNGQUOC.VN) is an independent company and has no affiliation with Wiki Foundation.