Ż

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ż is a letter in the Polish, Kashubian and Maltese alphabets.

Contents 1 Polish 1.1 Examples of ż 2 Kashubian 3 Maltese 4 Computer use 5 See also

[edit] Polish

ż represents a voiced retroflex fricative (IPA: [/ʐ/]), similar to English "s" as in pleasure. It usually corresponds to ж or ž in other Slavic languages.

Its pronunciation is the same as the rz (digraph), the only difference being that rz evolved from a palatalized r.

ż occasionally devoices to /ʂ/ (voiceless retroflex fricative), particularly in final position.

ż should not be confused with ź (or z followed by i), termed "soft zh", a voiced alveolopalatal fricative (IPA: [/ʑ/]).

[edit] Examples of ż

żółty (help·info) (yellow)
żona (help·info) (wife)

Compare ź:
źle (help·info) (wrongly, badly)
źrebię (help·info) (foal)

Occasionally, capital Ƶ (Z with horizontal stroke) is used instead of capital Ż for aesthetic purposes, especially in all-caps text and handwriting. It is often common to see capital Ƶ with dot above, used to easily distinguish it from capital Z or Ź.

[edit] Kashubian

Kashubian ż is a voiced fricative like in Polish, but it is postalveolar ( IPA: [/ʒ/]) rather than retroflex.

[edit] Maltese

In Maltese ż is pronounced like "z" in English "maze".

[edit] Computer use

[edit] See also

• Polish alphabet
• Polish phonology
• Dot (diacritic)

The Basic modern Latin alphabet
Aa	Bb	Cc	Dd	Ee	Ff	Gg	Hh	Ii	Jj	Kk	Ll	Mm	Nn	Oo	Pp	Qq	Rr	Ss	Tt	Uu	Vv	Ww	Xx	Yy	Zz
Letter Z with diacritics ŹźẐẑŽžŻżẒẓẔẕƵƶȤȥⱫⱬᵶᶎʐʑɀ Letters using dot-above sign ȦȧḂḃĊċḊḋĖėḞḟĠġḢḣİṀṁṄṅȮȯṖṗṘṙṠṡẛṪṫẆẇẊẋẎẏŻż history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters • ISO/IEC 646