Ž
| Že | |
|---|---|
| Ž ž | |
| Usage | |
| Writing system | Latin script |
| Type | Alphabetic |
| Language of origin | Czech language, Slovak language, Silesian language, Polish language |
| Sound values | |
| In Unicode | U+017D, U+017E |
| History | |
| Development | |
| Transliterations | Cyrillic, Glagolitic, Latin, Polish, Perso-Arabic |
| Other | |
| Associated numbers | 13, 27, 33 |
| Writing direction | Left-to-Right |
The grapheme Ž (minuscule: ž) is formed from Latin Z with the addition of caron (Czech: háček, Slovak: mäkčeň, Slovene: strešica, Serbo-Croatian: kvačica, Polish: ptaszek). 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.