Ezh | |
---|---|
Ʒ ʒ | |
(See below, Typography) | |
Usage | |
Writing system | Latin script |
Type | Alphabetic and Logographic |
Language of origin | Latin language |
Sound values | |
In Unicode | U+01B7, U+0292 |
History | |
Development | |
Time period | 1847 to present |
Descendants | • Ƹ • Ǯ |
Sisters | |
Transliterations | zh, ž |
Variations | (See below, Typography) |
Other | |
Associated graphs | z(x), zh, ž |
Writing direction | Left-to-Right |
Ezh (Ʒ ʒ) /ˈɛʒ/ EZH, 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. For example, the pronunciation of "si" in vision /ˈvɪʒən/ and precision /prɪˈsɪʒən/, or the ⟨s⟩ in treasure /ˈtrɛʒər/. See also the letter ⟨Ž⟩ as used in many Slavic languages, the letter ⟨Ż⟩ as used in Kashubian, the Persian alphabet letter ⟨ژ⟩, the Cyrillic letter ⟨Ж⟩, the Devanagari letter (झ़) and the Esperanto letter ⟨Ĵ⟩.
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 /ts/ and its ejective counterpart /tsʼ/, respectively. In Skolt Sami they respectively denote partially voiced alveolar and post-alveolar affricates, broadly represented /dz/ and /dʒ/. 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.