Ezh

Ezh
Ʒ ʒ
(See below, Typography)
Writing cursive forms of Ʒ
Usage
Writing systemLatin script
TypeAlphabetic and Logographic
Language of originLatin language
Sound values
In UnicodeU+01B7, U+0292
History
Development
Time period1847 to present
Descendants • Ƹ
 • Ǯ
Sisters
Transliterationszh, ž
Variations(See below, Typography)
Other
Associated graphsz(x), zh, ž
Writing directionLeft-to-Right
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

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 sigmaΣ⟩. It also appears in the orthography of Uropi.