Ż, ż (Z with overdot) is a letter, consisting of the letter Z of the ISO basic Latin alphabet and an overdot.
Usage Polish
In the Polish language, ż is the final, 32nd letter of the alphabet. It typically represents the voiced retroflex fricative (), somewhat similar to the pronunciation of in "mirae"; however, in a word-final position or when followed by a voiceless obstruent, it is devoiced to the voiceless retroflex fricative ().
Its pronunciation is the same as that of the digraph , except that (unlike ) also undergoes devoicing when preceded by a voiceless obstruent. The difference in spelling comes from their historical pronunciations: ż originates from a palatalized or , while evolved from a palatalized .
The letter was originally introduced in 1513 by Stanisław Zaborowski in his book Ortographia.Edward Polański. . , vol. 60, p. 31. 2004. Warsaw: Energeia. .
Occasionally, the letter Ƶ ƶ (Z with a horizontal stroke) is used instead of Ż ż for aesthetic purposes, especially in all-caps text and handwriting.
Kashubian Kashubian ż is a voiced fricative like in Polish, but it is postalveolar () rather than retroflex.
Maltese
In Maltese, ż represents the voiced alveolar sibilant , pronounced like "z" in English "mae". This contrasts with the letter , which represents the voiceless alveolar sibilant affricate , like in the word "ha". The corresponding letter in Arabic in this Maltese letter is .
Emilian-Romagnol In Emilian-Romagnol, ż represents the voiced dental fricative , pronounced like "th" in English "is".
Computing codes Character Ż ż Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTERZ WITH DOT ABOVE LATIN SMALL LETTERZ WITH DOT ABOVE character encoding decimal hex decimal hex Unicode 379 U+017B 380 U+017C UTF-8 197 187 C5 BB 197 188 C5 BC Numeric character reference Ż Ż ż ż CP 852 189 BD 190 BE CP 775 163 A3 164 A4 Mazovia 161 A1 167 A7 Windows-1250, ISO-8859-2 175 AF 191 BF Windows-1257, ISO-8859-13 221 DD 253 FD Mac Central European 251 FB 253 FD
See also Ź and Ž Polish alphabet Polish phonology Dot (diacritic)
References