Ż

Polish

Signage on Polish municipal police (Straż Miejska) cars uses both the standard letter variant (Ż) and the variant with horizontal stroke (Ƶ)

Ż represents the voiced retroflex fricative [ʐ], similar to the pronunciation of ⟨g⟩ in "mirage". It usually corresponds to Ж or Ž in most other Slavic languages.

Its pronunciation is the same as the rz (digraph), the only difference being that ⟨rz⟩ evolved from a palatalized ⟨r⟩. It also sounds closer to Czech Ř.

Ż occasionally devoices to the voiceless retroflex fricative [ʂ], particularly in final position.

Ż should not be confused with ⟨Ź⟩ (or ⟨z⟩ followed by ⟨i⟩), termed "soft zh", the voiced alveolopalatal fricative ([ʑ]).

Examples of Ż

 żółty  (yellow)
 żona  (wife)

Compare ź:
 źle  (wrongly, badly)
 źrebię  (foal)

Occasionally, capital Ƶ (Z with horizontal stroke) is used instead of capital Ż for aesthetic purposes, especially in all-caps text and handwriting. It is common to see capital Ƶ with dot above, used to easily distinguish it from capital Z or Ź (Z with acute accent).

Emilian-Romagnol

Ż is used in Emilian-Romagnol to represent the voiced dental fricative [ð] (or, in some peripheral dialects, the affricates [dð~dz]), e.g. viażèr [vjaˈðɛːr] "to travel".

Kashubian

Kashubian ż is a voiced fricative like in Polish, but it is postalveolar ([ʒ]) rather than retroflex.

Maltese

In Maltese ż is pronounced like "z" in English "maze".

Computing codes

See also

• Polish alphabet
• Polish phonology
• Dot (diacritic)

References