Zhe with breve (Ӂ ӂ; italics: ''Ӂ ӂ'') is a letter of the

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic 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, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...

created by Russian and later Soviet linguists for the cyrillization of non-

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...

. Its form is derived from the Cyrillic letter Zhe (Ж ж ''Ж ж'') by an addition of a

breve A breve ( , less often , grammatical gender, neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark , shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (, the wedge or in ...

. Zhe with breve is currently used in

Moldovan Cyrillic The Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet is a Cyrillic alphabets, Cyrillic alphabet designed for the Romanian language spoken in the Soviet Union (Moldovan language, Moldovan) and was in official use from 1924 to 1932 and 1938 to 1989 (and still in use ...

(in use in

Transnistria Transnistria, officially known as the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic and locally as Pridnestrovie, is a Landlocked country, landlocked Transnistria conflict#International recognition of Transnistria, breakaway state internationally recogn ...

) to represent , the

voiced postalveolar affricate The voiced palato-alveolar sibilant affricate, voiced post-alveolar affricate or voiced domed postalveolar sibilant affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The sound is transcribed in the International Phonetic A ...

, like the pronunciation of in "jam". It thus corresponds to before front vowels in the Romanian Latin alphabet. The letter Џ had been used for a similar sound in the

Romanian Cyrillic alphabet The Romanian Cyrillic alphabet is the Cyrillic alphabet that was used to write the Romanian language and Church Slavonic until the 1830s, when it began to be gradually replaced by a Latin-based Romanian alphabet.Cyrillic remained in occasion ...

, used until the 19th century. Formerly, Zhe with breve was used in the Gagauz Cyrillic alphabet, in use from 1957 to 1993, also to represent , corresponding to in the Gagauz Latin alphabet. Around the turn of the 20th century, it was also used in several Permyak alphabets to represent , and in the Translation Committee's Abkhaz alphabet to represent , the

voiced postalveolar fricative The voiced postalveolar or palato-alveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The International Phonetic Association uses the term ''voiced postalveolar fricative'' only for the sound , but it also describe ...

, as in pleasure, which corresponds to Жь жь in the modern Abkhaz alphabet (Zhe alone represented, and still represents, , the voiced retroflex fricative). In its modern usage, Zhe with breve corresponds in other Cyrillic alphabets to the digraphs or , or to the letters Che with descender (Ҷ ҷ), Che with vertical stroke (Ҹ ҹ),

Dzhe Dzhe (Џ џ; italics: ''Џ џ'' or ; italics: ''Џ, џ''), also spelled dže, is a letter of the Cyrillic script used in Macedonian language, Macedonian and Variety (linguistics), varieties of Serbo-Croatian (Montenegrin language, Montene ...

(Џ џ), Khakassian Che (Ӌ ӌ), Zhe with diaeresis (Ӝ ӝ), or Zhje (Җ җ). Traditionally, these characters were transliterated into the International English character set as , as in '' Birobidzhan''; but more recently, especially in the US, they are transliterated as a simple , as in 'jump'.

Computing codes

External links

Gagauz language, alphabet and pronunciation

References

Gagauz language Moldovan language Cyrillic letters with diacritics Letters with breve {{cyrillic-alphabet-stub

Computing codes

See also

External links

References