Ezh (letter)

Ezh (Ʒ ʒ) , also called the "tailed z", is a letter, notable for its use in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent the voiced postalveolar fricative consonant. This sound, sometimes transcribed /zh/, occurs in the pronunciation of in ''vision'' and ''precision'' , the in ''treasure'' , and the in ''beige'' .

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 and the Dagbani language of Ghana, where the uppercase variant looks like a reflected sigma ⟨Σ⟩. It also appears in the orthography of Uropi.

The zh sound is represented by various letters in different languages, such as the letter ⟨ Ž⟩ as used in many Slavic languages, the letter ⟨ Ż⟩ as used in Kashubian, the letter ⟨⟩ in a number of Arabic dialects, the Persian alphabet letter ⟨⟩, the Cyrillic letter ⟨⟩, the Devanagari letter ( झ़) and the Esperanto letter ⟨ Ĵ⟩.

Origin

As a phonetic symbol, it originates with Isaac Pitman's English Phonotypic Alphabet in 1847, as a ''z'' with an added hook. The symbol is based on medieval cursive forms of Latin ⟨ z⟩, evolving into the blackletter ⟨z⟩ letter. In Unicode, however, the blackletter ⟨⟩ (" tailed z", German ) is considered a glyph variant of ⟨z⟩, and not an ezh.
Humanist Gian Giorgio Trissino proposed in 1524 a reform of 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, Unicode ⟨ʒ⟩ is sometimes used, strictly speaking incorrectly. Unicode offers ⟨ ȥ⟩ "z with hook" as a grapheme for Middle High German coronal fricative instead.

Similarities to other glyphs

Yogh

In Unicode 1.0, the character was unified with the unrelated character yogh ⟨Ȝ ȝ⟩, 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. 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 and the Early English Text Society extend the uppermost tip of the yogh into a little curvature upward.

Numeral 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. Some typefaces use a form of ⟨3⟩ with a flat top, very similar (or virtually identical) to an ezh.

In handwritten Cyrillic, the numeral ⟨3⟩ is sometimes written in a form similar to the ezh, so as to distinguish it from the letter ze ⟨З⟩.

Hiragana ro

Ezh looks similar to the syllabogram ⟨ ろ⟩, which is the hiragana form of the Japanese mora ''ro''.

Cyrillic ze and dze

The Cyrillic letter ze ⟨З з⟩ has a similar body to Ezh and the Abkhazian dze ⟨Ӡ ӡ⟩. As customary, the Cyrillic script has a stiffer structure, but both letters have common roots in historical cursive forms of the Greek letter zeta ⟨Ζ ζ⟩.

However, Latin ezh and Cyrillic ze represent different phonemes: the former generally represents , while the latter represents /z/. Cyrillic uses zhe ⟨Ж ж⟩ for the /ʒ/ phoneme.

Usage

Language orthographies

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

In the IPA it represents the voiced postalveolar fricative 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.

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

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".

It was also used during Latinisation in the USSR in the project of Unified Northern Alphabet and other alphabets of the people of the Soviet Union during the 1920–1930s.

Ezh as an abbreviation for dram

In Unicode, a standard designed to allow symbols from all writing systems to be represented and manipulated by computers, the ezh is also used as the symbol to represent the abbreviation for dram or drachm, an apothecaries' system unit of mass. Unicode has no dedicated symbol for dram, but the Unicode code table entry for ezh reads "LATIN SMALL LETTER EZH = dram sign". The upper-case letter ''z'' in Blackletter/ Fraktur hand, , is also seen used for dram, but this letter is meant to be used in mathematics and phonetics, and is not recommended as an abbreviation for dram.

Encoding and ligatures

The Unicode code points are U+01B7 for ⟨Ʒ⟩ and U+0292 for ⟨ʒ⟩. Ezh with caron is also precomposed in Unicode with the code points U+01EE for ⟨Ǯ⟩ and U+01EF for ⟨ǯ⟩.

The IPA historically allowed for ezh to be ligatured to other letters; some of these ligatures have been added to the Unicode standard.
*Dezh ligatures ezh with the letter D ().
*Lezh ligatures ezh with the letter L ().
*Tezh ligatures ezh with the letter T ( and ).

Related obsolete IPA characters include and .

and are also used for phonetic transcription.

is used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet.

was previously used in the IPA

Typing character

For Mac: , followed by or respectively.

For Windows (Sámi Keyboard Layout): .

Gallery

CHE Bad Zurzach COA.svg, Coat of arms of Bad Zurzach

See also

* Unified Northern Alphabet
* Reversed Ezh (Ƹ ƹ)
* Abkhazian Dze (Ӡ ӡ)
* Cyrillic Ze (З з)

References

External links

* Michael Everson's essa
On the derivation of Yogh and Ezh

{{DEFAULTSORT:Z - Ezh
Phonetic transcription symbols
Latin-script letters