Ž

Žet
Ž ž
Usage
Writing systemLatin script
TypeAlphabetic
Language of originCzech language, Estonian language, Finnish language, Inari Sami language, Lakota language, Latvian language, Livonian language, Lower Sorbian language, Romani language, Samogitian language, Serbo-Croatian language, Skolt Sami language, Slovak language, Tuareg language, Turkmen language, Wakhi language
Sound values
In UnicodeU+017D, U+017E
History
Development
Transliterations Cyrillic, Glagolitic, Latin Polish, Perso-Arabic
Other
Associated numbers13, 27, 33
Writing directionLeft-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). 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.