Английская буква зет как пишется

This article is about the letter of the Latin alphabet. For the Greek letter with the same symbol, see Zeta. For other uses, see Z (disambiguation).

Z
Z z
(See below, Typography)
Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	Alphabetic and Logographic
Language of origin	Latin language
Phonetic usage	[z] [t͡s] [d͡z] [ð] [θ] [s] [ʃ] [j]
Unicode codepoint	U+005A, U+007A
Alphabetical position	26
History
Development	Ζ ζ 𐌆 Z z
Time period	~700 BC to present
Descendants	• Ʒ  • Ç  • Ƶ  • Ž  • Ż  • 𐌶  • ℤ  • Ꮓ
Sisters	З Ѕ Ԑ Ԇ Ҙ ꙅ Ӡ ז‬ ز ܙ ژ‬ ࠆ ዘ 𐎇 Զ զ Ꮓ Ꮛ Ꮸ ડ ઢ ज़
Variations	(See below, Typography)
Other
Other letters commonly used with	z(x), cz, dž, dz, sz, dzs, tzsch
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.

Z (or z) is the 26th and last letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its usual names in English are zed () and zee (), with an occasional archaic variant izzard ().^[1]

Name and pronunciation[edit]

In most English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the letter’s name is zed , reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta (this dates to Latin, which borrowed Y and Z from Greek), but in American English its name is zee , analogous to the names for B, C, D, etc., and deriving from a late 17th-century English dialectal form.^[2]

Another English dialectal form is izzard . This dates from the mid-18th century and probably derives from Occitan izèda or the French ézed, whose reconstructed Latin form would be *idzēta,^[1] perhaps a Vulgar Latin form with a prosthetic vowel. Its variants are still used in Hong Kong English and Cantonese.^[3]

Other languages spell the letter’s name in a similar way: zeta in Italian, Basque, and Spanish, seta in Icelandic (no longer part of its alphabet but found in personal names), zê in Portuguese, zäta in Swedish, zæt in Danish, zet in Dutch, Indonesian, Polish, Romanian, and Czech, Zett in German (capitalised as a noun), zett in Norwegian, zède in French, zetto (ゼット) in Japanese, and zét in Vietnamese. Several languages render it as /ts/ or /dz/, e.g. tseta /tseta/ or more rarely tset /tset/ in Finnish (sometimes dropping the first t altogether; /seta/, or /set/ the latter of which is not very commonplace). In Standard Chinese pinyin, the name of the letter Z is pronounced [tsɨ], as in «zi», although the English zed and zee have become very common. In Esperanto the name of the letter Z is pronounced /zo/.

Under the NATO spelling alphabet, the letter is signified with ZULU, like the Zulu people.

History[edit]

Phoenician Zayin	Etruscan Z	Greek Zeta

Semitic[edit]

The Semitic symbol was the seventh letter, named zayin, which meant «weapon» or «sword». It represented either the sound /z/ as in English and French, or possibly more like /dz/ (as in Italian zeta, zero).

Greek[edit]

The Greek form of Z was a close copy of the Phoenician Zayin (), and the Greek inscriptional form remained in this shape throughout ancient times. The Greeks called it zeta, a new name made in imitation of eta (η) and theta (θ).

In earlier Greek of Athens and Northwest Greece, the letter seems to have represented /dz/; in Attic, from the 4th century BC onwards, it seems to have stood for /zd/ and /dz/ – there is no consensus concerning this issue.^[4] In other dialects, such as Elean and Cretan, the symbol seems to have been used for sounds resembling the English voiced and voiceless th (IPA /ð/ and /θ/, respectively). In the common dialect (koine) that succeeded the older dialects, ζ became /z/, as it remains in modern Greek.

Etruscan[edit]

The Etruscan letter Z was derived from the Phoenician alphabet, most probably through the Greek alphabet used on the island of Ischia. In Etruscan, this letter may have represented /ts/.

Latin[edit]

The letter Z was borrowed from the Greek Zeta, most likely to represent the sound /t͡s/. At c. 300 BC, Appius Claudius Caecus, the Roman censor, removed the letter Z from the alphabet, allegedly due to his distaste for the letter, in that it «looked like the tongue of a corpse». A more likely explanation is the sound had disappeared from Latin, making the letter useless for spelling Latin words. It is also thought due to rhotacism, Z became a trilled R sound, /r/. Whatever the case may be, Appius Claudius’ distaste for the letter Z is today credited as the reason for its removal. A few centuries later, after the Roman Conquest of Greece, Z was again borrowed to spell words from the prestigious Attic dialect of Greek.

Before the reintroduction of z, the sound of zeta was written s at the beginning of words and ss in the middle of words, as in sōna for ζώνη «belt» and trapessita for τραπεζίτης «banker».

In some inscriptions, z represented a Vulgar Latin sound, likely an affricate, formed by the merging of the reflexes of Classical Latin /j/, /dj/ and /gj/:^{[example needed]} for example, zanuariu for ianuariu «January», ziaconus for diaconus «deacon», and oze for hodie «today».^[5] Likewise, /di/ sometimes replaced /z/ in words like baptidiare for baptizare «to baptize». In modern Italian, z represents /ts/ or /dz/, whereas the reflexes of ianuarius and hodie are written with the letter g (representing /dʒ/ when before i and e): gennaio, oggi. In other languages, such as Spanish, further evolution of the sound occurred.

Old English[edit]

Old English used S alone for both the unvoiced and the voiced sibilant. The Latin sound imported through French was new and was not written with Z but with G or I. The successive changes can be seen in the doublet forms jealous and zealous. Both of these come from a late Latin zelosus, derived from the imported Greek ζῆλος zêlos. The earlier form is jealous; its initial sound is the [dʒ], which developed to Modern French [ʒ]. John Wycliffe wrote the word as gelows or ielous.

Z at the end of a word was pronounced ts, as in English assets, from Old French asez «enough» (Modern French assez), from Vulgar Latin ad satis («to sufficiency»).^[6]

Last letter of the alphabet[edit]

In earlier times, the English alphabets used by children terminated not with Z but with & or related typographic symbols.^[7] In her 1859 novel Adam Bede, George Eliot refers to Z being followed by & when her character Jacob Storey says, «He thought it [Z] had only been put to finish off th’ alphabet like; though ampusand would ha’ done as well, for what he could see.»^[8]

Some Latin based alphabets have extra letters on the end of the alphabet. The last letter for the Icelandic, Finnish and Swedish alphabets is Ö, while it is Å for Danish and Norwegian. In the German alphabet, the umlauts (Ä/ä, Ö/ö, and Ü/ü) and the letter ß (Eszett or scharfes S) are regarded respectively as modifications of the vowels a/o/u and as a (standardized) variant spelling of ss, not as independent letters, so they come after the unmodified letters in the alphabetical order. The German alphabet ends with z.

Variant and derived forms[edit]

A glyph variant of Z originating in the medieval Gothic minuscules and the Early Modern Blackletter typefaces is the «tailed z» (German geschwänztes Z, also Z mit Unterschlinge). In some Antiqua typefaces, this letter is present as a standalone letter or in ligatures. Ligated with long s (ſ), it is part of the origin of the Eszett (ß) in the German alphabet. The character ezh (Ʒ) resembles a tailed z, which came to be indistinguishable from the yogh (ȝ) in Middle English writing.

Unicode assigns codepoints U+2128 ℨ BLACK-LETTER CAPITAL Z (ℨ, ℨ) and U+1D537 𝔷 MATHEMATICAL FRAKTUR SMALL Z (𝔷) in the Letterlike Symbols and Mathematical alphanumeric symbols ranges respectively.

• 

• 

  z in a sans serif typeface

There is also a variant with a stroke.

Pronunciation and use[edit]

English[edit]

In modern English orthography, the letter ⟨z⟩ usually represents the sound .

It represents in words like seizure. More often, this sound appears as ⟨su⟩ or ⟨si⟩ in words such as measure, decision, etc. In all these words, developed from earlier by yod-coalescence.

Few words in the Basic English vocabulary begin or end with ⟨z⟩, though it occurs within other words. It is the least frequently used letter in written English,^[9] with a frequency of about 0.08% in words.
⟨z⟩ is more common in the Oxford spelling of British English than in standard British English, as this variant prefers the more etymologically ‘correct’ -ize endings, which are closer to Greek, to -ise endings, which are closer to French; however, -yse is preferred over -yze in Oxford spelling, as it is closer to the original Greek roots of words like analyse. The most common variety of English it is used in is American English, which prefers both the -ize and -yze endings. One native Germanic English word that contains ‘z’, freeze (past froze, participle frozen) came to be spelled that way by convention, even though it could have been spelled with ‘s’ (as with choose, chose and chosen).

⟨z⟩ is used in writing to represent the act of sleeping (often using multiple z’s, like zzzz), as an onomatopoeia for the sound of closed-mouth human snoring.^[10]

Other languages[edit]

⟨z⟩ stands for a voiced alveolar or voiced dental sibilant /z/, in Albanian, Breton, Czech, Dutch, French, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, and the International Phonetic Alphabet. It stands for /t͡s/ in Chinese pinyin and Jyutping, Finnish (occurs in loanwords only), and German, and is likewise expressed /ts/ in Old Norse. In Italian, it represents two phonemes, /t͡s/ and /d͡z/. In Portuguese, it stands for /z/ in most cases, but also for /s/ or /ʃ/ (depending on the regional variant) at the end of syllables. In Basque, it represents the sound /s/.

Castilian Spanish uses the letter to represent /θ/ (as English ⟨th⟩ in thing), though in other dialects (Latin American, Andalusian) this sound has merged with /s/. Before voiced consonants, the sound is voiced to [ð] or [z], sometimes debbucalized to [ɦ] (as in the surname Guzmán [ɡuðˈman], [ɡuzˈman] or [ɡuɦˈman]). This is the only context in which ⟨z⟩ can represent a voiced sibilant [z] in Spanish, though ⟨s⟩ also represents [z] (or [ɦ], depending on the dialect) in this environment.

In Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, ⟨z⟩ usually stands for the sound /s/ and thus shares the value of ⟨s⟩; it normally occurs only in loanwords that are spelt with ⟨z⟩ in the source languages.

The letter ⟨z⟩ on its own represents /z/ in Polish. It is also used in four of the seven officially recognized digraphs: ⟨cz⟩ (/t͡ʂ/), ⟨dz⟩ (/d͡z/ or /t͡s/), ⟨rz⟩ (/ʐ/ or /ʂ/, sometimes it represents a sequence /rz/) and ⟨sz⟩ (/ʂ/), and is the most frequently used of the consonants in that language. (Other Slavic languages avoid digraphs and mark the corresponding phonemes with the háček (caron) diacritic: ⟨č⟩, ⟨ď⟩, ⟨ř⟩, ⟨š⟩; this system has its origin in Czech orthography of the Hussite period.) ⟨z⟩ can also appear with diacritical marks, namely ⟨ź⟩ and ⟨ż⟩, which are used to represent the sounds /ʑ/ and /ʐ/. They also appear in the digraphs ⟨dź⟩ (/d͡ʑ/ or /t͡ɕ/) and ⟨dż⟩ (/d͡ʐ/ or /t͡ʂ/).

Hungarian uses ⟨z⟩ in the digraphs ⟨sz⟩ (expressing /s/, as opposed to the value of ⟨s⟩, which is ʃ), and ⟨zs⟩ (expressing ʒ). The letter ⟨z⟩ on its own represents /z/.

In Modern Scots ⟨z⟩ is used in place of the obsolete letter ⟨ȝ⟩ (yogh) and should be pronounced as a hard ‘g’. Whilst there are a few common nouns which use ⟨z⟩ in this manner, such as brulzie (pronounced ‘brulgey’ meaning broil), z as a yogh substitute is more common in people’s names and place-names. Often the names are mispronounced to follow the apparent English spelling so Mackenzie is commonly pronounced with a ‘z’ sound. Menzies, however, still retains the correct pronunciation of ‘Mingus’.

Among non-European languages that have adopted the Latin alphabet, ⟨z⟩ usually stands for [z], such as in Azerbaijani, Igbo, Indonesian, Shona, Swahili, Tatar, Turkish, and Zulu. ⟨z⟩ represents [d͡z] in Northern Sami and Inari Sami. In Turkmen, ⟨z⟩ represents [ð].

In the Nihon-shiki, Kunrei-shiki, and Hepburn romanisations of Japanese, ⟨z⟩ stands for a phoneme whose allophones include [z] and [dz]. Additionally, in the Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki systems, ⟨z⟩ is used to represent that same phoneme before /i/, where it’s pronounced [d͡ʑ ~ ʑ].

Other systems[edit]

A graphical variant of ⟨z⟩ is ⟨ʒ⟩, which has been adopted into the International Phonetic Alphabet as the sign for the voiced postalveolar fricative.

Uses of Z as a symbol [edit]

In mathematics, U+2124 ℤ (DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL Z) is used to denote the set of integers. Originally, was just a handwritten version of the bold capital Z used in printing but, over time, it has come to be used more frequently in printed works too.

In chemistry, the letter Z is used to denote the Atomic number of an element (number of protons), such as Z=3 for Lithium.

In electrical engineering, Z is used to denote electrical impedance.

In astronomy, z is a dimensionless quantity representing redshift.

The Z boson is a particle in nuclear physics.

Z has been used as a military symbol by Russian forces during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russian civilians have used it in support of their government.^[11][12]

[edit]

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet[edit]

• Z with diacritics: Ź ź Ẑ ẑ Ž ž Ż ż Ẓ ẓ Ẕ ẕ Ƶ ƶ ᵶ^[13] Ᶎ^[14] ᶎ^[15] Ⱬ ⱬ
• ß : German letter regarded as a ligature of long s (ſ) and short s, called scharfes S or Eszett. (In some typefaces and handwriting styles it is rather a ligature of long s and tailed z (ſʒ).)
• Ȥ ȥ: Latin letter z with a hook, intended for the transcription of Middle High German, for instances of the letter z with a sound value of /s/.
• Ɀ ɀ : Latin letter Z with swash tail
• Ʒ ʒ : Latin letter ezh
• Ꝣ ꝣ : Visigothic Z
• Ᶎ ᶎ : Z with hook, used for writing Mandarin Chinese using the early draft version of pinyin romanization during the mid-1950s^[14]
• IPA-specific symbols related to Z: ʒ ʑ ʐ ɮ
• U+1D22 ᴢ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL Z is used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet^[16]
• Modifier letters ᶻ ᶼ ᶽ are used in phonetic transcription^[15]

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets[edit]

• 𐤆 : Semitic letter Zayin, from which the following letters derive
  • Ζ ζ : Greek letter Zeta, from which the following letters derive
    • Ⲍ ⲍ : Coptic letter Zēta
    • 𐌆 : Old Italic Z, which is the ancestor of modern Latin Z
    • 𐌶 : Gothic letter ezec
    • З з : Cyrillic letter Ze

Computing codes[edit]

¹ Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

On the QWERTZ keyboard used in Central Europe the Z replaces the Y of the standard US/UK QWERTY keyboard as the sixth letter of the first row.

Other representations[edit]

See also[edit]

• Bourbaki dangerous bend symbol, U+2621 ☡ CAUTION SIGN
• Z with stroke, Ƶ
• Zed
• Zee
• Z flag
• Z (military symbol)

References[edit]

External links[edit]

This article is about the letter of the Latin alphabet. For the Greek letter with the same symbol, see Zeta. For other uses, see Z (disambiguation).

Z
Z z
(See below, Typography)
Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	Alphabetic and Logographic
Language of origin	Latin language
Phonetic usage	[z] [t͡s] [d͡z] [ð] [θ] [s] [ʃ] [j]
Unicode codepoint	U+005A, U+007A
Alphabetical position	26
History
Development	Ζ ζ 𐌆 Z z
Time period	~700 BC to present
Descendants	• Ʒ  • Ç  • Ƶ  • Ž  • Ż  • 𐌶  • ℤ  • Ꮓ
Sisters	З Ѕ Ԑ Ԇ Ҙ ꙅ Ӡ ז‬ ز ܙ ژ‬ ࠆ ዘ 𐎇 Զ զ Ꮓ Ꮛ Ꮸ ડ ઢ ज़
Variations	(See below, Typography)
Other
Other letters commonly used with	z(x), cz, dž, dz, sz, dzs, tzsch
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.

Z (or z) is the 26th and last letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its usual names in English are zed () and zee (), with an occasional archaic variant izzard ().^[1]

Name and pronunciation[edit]

In most English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the letter’s name is zed , reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta (this dates to Latin, which borrowed Y and Z from Greek), but in American English its name is zee , analogous to the names for B, C, D, etc., and deriving from a late 17th-century English dialectal form.^[2]

Another English dialectal form is izzard . This dates from the mid-18th century and probably derives from Occitan izèda or the French ézed, whose reconstructed Latin form would be *idzēta,^[1] perhaps a Vulgar Latin form with a prosthetic vowel. Its variants are still used in Hong Kong English and Cantonese.^[3]

Other languages spell the letter’s name in a similar way: zeta in Italian, Basque, and Spanish, seta in Icelandic (no longer part of its alphabet but found in personal names), zê in Portuguese, zäta in Swedish, zæt in Danish, zet in Dutch, Indonesian, Polish, Romanian, and Czech, Zett in German (capitalised as a noun), zett in Norwegian, zède in French, zetto (ゼット) in Japanese, and zét in Vietnamese. Several languages render it as /ts/ or /dz/, e.g. tseta /tseta/ or more rarely tset /tset/ in Finnish (sometimes dropping the first t altogether; /seta/, or /set/ the latter of which is not very commonplace). In Standard Chinese pinyin, the name of the letter Z is pronounced [tsɨ], as in «zi», although the English zed and zee have become very common. In Esperanto the name of the letter Z is pronounced /zo/.

Under the NATO spelling alphabet, the letter is signified with ZULU, like the Zulu people.

History[edit]

Phoenician Zayin	Etruscan Z	Greek Zeta

Semitic[edit]

The Semitic symbol was the seventh letter, named zayin, which meant «weapon» or «sword». It represented either the sound /z/ as in English and French, or possibly more like /dz/ (as in Italian zeta, zero).

Greek[edit]

The Greek form of Z was a close copy of the Phoenician Zayin (), and the Greek inscriptional form remained in this shape throughout ancient times. The Greeks called it zeta, a new name made in imitation of eta (η) and theta (θ).

In earlier Greek of Athens and Northwest Greece, the letter seems to have represented /dz/; in Attic, from the 4th century BC onwards, it seems to have stood for /zd/ and /dz/ – there is no consensus concerning this issue.^[4] In other dialects, such as Elean and Cretan, the symbol seems to have been used for sounds resembling the English voiced and voiceless th (IPA /ð/ and /θ/, respectively). In the common dialect (koine) that succeeded the older dialects, ζ became /z/, as it remains in modern Greek.

Etruscan[edit]

The Etruscan letter Z was derived from the Phoenician alphabet, most probably through the Greek alphabet used on the island of Ischia. In Etruscan, this letter may have represented /ts/.

Latin[edit]

The letter Z was borrowed from the Greek Zeta, most likely to represent the sound /t͡s/. At c. 300 BC, Appius Claudius Caecus, the Roman censor, removed the letter Z from the alphabet, allegedly due to his distaste for the letter, in that it «looked like the tongue of a corpse». A more likely explanation is the sound had disappeared from Latin, making the letter useless for spelling Latin words. It is also thought due to rhotacism, Z became a trilled R sound, /r/. Whatever the case may be, Appius Claudius’ distaste for the letter Z is today credited as the reason for its removal. A few centuries later, after the Roman Conquest of Greece, Z was again borrowed to spell words from the prestigious Attic dialect of Greek.

Before the reintroduction of z, the sound of zeta was written s at the beginning of words and ss in the middle of words, as in sōna for ζώνη «belt» and trapessita for τραπεζίτης «banker».

In some inscriptions, z represented a Vulgar Latin sound, likely an affricate, formed by the merging of the reflexes of Classical Latin /j/, /dj/ and /gj/:^{[example needed]} for example, zanuariu for ianuariu «January», ziaconus for diaconus «deacon», and oze for hodie «today».^[5] Likewise, /di/ sometimes replaced /z/ in words like baptidiare for baptizare «to baptize». In modern Italian, z represents /ts/ or /dz/, whereas the reflexes of ianuarius and hodie are written with the letter g (representing /dʒ/ when before i and e): gennaio, oggi. In other languages, such as Spanish, further evolution of the sound occurred.

Old English[edit]

Old English used S alone for both the unvoiced and the voiced sibilant. The Latin sound imported through French was new and was not written with Z but with G or I. The successive changes can be seen in the doublet forms jealous and zealous. Both of these come from a late Latin zelosus, derived from the imported Greek ζῆλος zêlos. The earlier form is jealous; its initial sound is the [dʒ], which developed to Modern French [ʒ]. John Wycliffe wrote the word as gelows or ielous.

Z at the end of a word was pronounced ts, as in English assets, from Old French asez «enough» (Modern French assez), from Vulgar Latin ad satis («to sufficiency»).^[6]

Last letter of the alphabet[edit]

In earlier times, the English alphabets used by children terminated not with Z but with & or related typographic symbols.^[7] In her 1859 novel Adam Bede, George Eliot refers to Z being followed by & when her character Jacob Storey says, «He thought it [Z] had only been put to finish off th’ alphabet like; though ampusand would ha’ done as well, for what he could see.»^[8]

Some Latin based alphabets have extra letters on the end of the alphabet. The last letter for the Icelandic, Finnish and Swedish alphabets is Ö, while it is Å for Danish and Norwegian. In the German alphabet, the umlauts (Ä/ä, Ö/ö, and Ü/ü) and the letter ß (Eszett or scharfes S) are regarded respectively as modifications of the vowels a/o/u and as a (standardized) variant spelling of ss, not as independent letters, so they come after the unmodified letters in the alphabetical order. The German alphabet ends with z.

Variant and derived forms[edit]

A glyph variant of Z originating in the medieval Gothic minuscules and the Early Modern Blackletter typefaces is the «tailed z» (German geschwänztes Z, also Z mit Unterschlinge). In some Antiqua typefaces, this letter is present as a standalone letter or in ligatures. Ligated with long s (ſ), it is part of the origin of the Eszett (ß) in the German alphabet. The character ezh (Ʒ) resembles a tailed z, which came to be indistinguishable from the yogh (ȝ) in Middle English writing.

Unicode assigns codepoints U+2128 ℨ BLACK-LETTER CAPITAL Z (ℨ, ℨ) and U+1D537 𝔷 MATHEMATICAL FRAKTUR SMALL Z (𝔷) in the Letterlike Symbols and Mathematical alphanumeric symbols ranges respectively.

• 

• 

  z in a sans serif typeface

There is also a variant with a stroke.

Pronunciation and use[edit]

English[edit]

In modern English orthography, the letter ⟨z⟩ usually represents the sound .

It represents in words like seizure. More often, this sound appears as ⟨su⟩ or ⟨si⟩ in words such as measure, decision, etc. In all these words, developed from earlier by yod-coalescence.

Few words in the Basic English vocabulary begin or end with ⟨z⟩, though it occurs within other words. It is the least frequently used letter in written English,^[9] with a frequency of about 0.08% in words.
⟨z⟩ is more common in the Oxford spelling of British English than in standard British English, as this variant prefers the more etymologically ‘correct’ -ize endings, which are closer to Greek, to -ise endings, which are closer to French; however, -yse is preferred over -yze in Oxford spelling, as it is closer to the original Greek roots of words like analyse. The most common variety of English it is used in is American English, which prefers both the -ize and -yze endings. One native Germanic English word that contains ‘z’, freeze (past froze, participle frozen) came to be spelled that way by convention, even though it could have been spelled with ‘s’ (as with choose, chose and chosen).

⟨z⟩ is used in writing to represent the act of sleeping (often using multiple z’s, like zzzz), as an onomatopoeia for the sound of closed-mouth human snoring.^[10]

Other languages[edit]

⟨z⟩ stands for a voiced alveolar or voiced dental sibilant /z/, in Albanian, Breton, Czech, Dutch, French, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, and the International Phonetic Alphabet. It stands for /t͡s/ in Chinese pinyin and Jyutping, Finnish (occurs in loanwords only), and German, and is likewise expressed /ts/ in Old Norse. In Italian, it represents two phonemes, /t͡s/ and /d͡z/. In Portuguese, it stands for /z/ in most cases, but also for /s/ or /ʃ/ (depending on the regional variant) at the end of syllables. In Basque, it represents the sound /s/.

Castilian Spanish uses the letter to represent /θ/ (as English ⟨th⟩ in thing), though in other dialects (Latin American, Andalusian) this sound has merged with /s/. Before voiced consonants, the sound is voiced to [ð] or [z], sometimes debbucalized to [ɦ] (as in the surname Guzmán [ɡuðˈman], [ɡuzˈman] or [ɡuɦˈman]). This is the only context in which ⟨z⟩ can represent a voiced sibilant [z] in Spanish, though ⟨s⟩ also represents [z] (or [ɦ], depending on the dialect) in this environment.

In Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, ⟨z⟩ usually stands for the sound /s/ and thus shares the value of ⟨s⟩; it normally occurs only in loanwords that are spelt with ⟨z⟩ in the source languages.

The letter ⟨z⟩ on its own represents /z/ in Polish. It is also used in four of the seven officially recognized digraphs: ⟨cz⟩ (/t͡ʂ/), ⟨dz⟩ (/d͡z/ or /t͡s/), ⟨rz⟩ (/ʐ/ or /ʂ/, sometimes it represents a sequence /rz/) and ⟨sz⟩ (/ʂ/), and is the most frequently used of the consonants in that language. (Other Slavic languages avoid digraphs and mark the corresponding phonemes with the háček (caron) diacritic: ⟨č⟩, ⟨ď⟩, ⟨ř⟩, ⟨š⟩; this system has its origin in Czech orthography of the Hussite period.) ⟨z⟩ can also appear with diacritical marks, namely ⟨ź⟩ and ⟨ż⟩, which are used to represent the sounds /ʑ/ and /ʐ/. They also appear in the digraphs ⟨dź⟩ (/d͡ʑ/ or /t͡ɕ/) and ⟨dż⟩ (/d͡ʐ/ or /t͡ʂ/).

Hungarian uses ⟨z⟩ in the digraphs ⟨sz⟩ (expressing /s/, as opposed to the value of ⟨s⟩, which is ʃ), and ⟨zs⟩ (expressing ʒ). The letter ⟨z⟩ on its own represents /z/.

In Modern Scots ⟨z⟩ is used in place of the obsolete letter ⟨ȝ⟩ (yogh) and should be pronounced as a hard ‘g’. Whilst there are a few common nouns which use ⟨z⟩ in this manner, such as brulzie (pronounced ‘brulgey’ meaning broil), z as a yogh substitute is more common in people’s names and place-names. Often the names are mispronounced to follow the apparent English spelling so Mackenzie is commonly pronounced with a ‘z’ sound. Menzies, however, still retains the correct pronunciation of ‘Mingus’.

Among non-European languages that have adopted the Latin alphabet, ⟨z⟩ usually stands for [z], such as in Azerbaijani, Igbo, Indonesian, Shona, Swahili, Tatar, Turkish, and Zulu. ⟨z⟩ represents [d͡z] in Northern Sami and Inari Sami. In Turkmen, ⟨z⟩ represents [ð].

In the Nihon-shiki, Kunrei-shiki, and Hepburn romanisations of Japanese, ⟨z⟩ stands for a phoneme whose allophones include [z] and [dz]. Additionally, in the Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki systems, ⟨z⟩ is used to represent that same phoneme before /i/, where it’s pronounced [d͡ʑ ~ ʑ].

Other systems[edit]

A graphical variant of ⟨z⟩ is ⟨ʒ⟩, which has been adopted into the International Phonetic Alphabet as the sign for the voiced postalveolar fricative.

Uses of Z as a symbol [edit]

In mathematics, U+2124 ℤ (DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL Z) is used to denote the set of integers. Originally, was just a handwritten version of the bold capital Z used in printing but, over time, it has come to be used more frequently in printed works too.

In chemistry, the letter Z is used to denote the Atomic number of an element (number of protons), such as Z=3 for Lithium.

In electrical engineering, Z is used to denote electrical impedance.

In astronomy, z is a dimensionless quantity representing redshift.

The Z boson is a particle in nuclear physics.

Z has been used as a military symbol by Russian forces during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russian civilians have used it in support of their government.^[11][12]

[edit]

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet[edit]

• Z with diacritics: Ź ź Ẑ ẑ Ž ž Ż ż Ẓ ẓ Ẕ ẕ Ƶ ƶ ᵶ^[13] Ᶎ^[14] ᶎ^[15] Ⱬ ⱬ
• ß : German letter regarded as a ligature of long s (ſ) and short s, called scharfes S or Eszett. (In some typefaces and handwriting styles it is rather a ligature of long s and tailed z (ſʒ).)
• Ȥ ȥ: Latin letter z with a hook, intended for the transcription of Middle High German, for instances of the letter z with a sound value of /s/.
• Ɀ ɀ : Latin letter Z with swash tail
• Ʒ ʒ : Latin letter ezh
• Ꝣ ꝣ : Visigothic Z
• Ᶎ ᶎ : Z with hook, used for writing Mandarin Chinese using the early draft version of pinyin romanization during the mid-1950s^[14]
• IPA-specific symbols related to Z: ʒ ʑ ʐ ɮ
• U+1D22 ᴢ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL Z is used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet^[16]
• Modifier letters ᶻ ᶼ ᶽ are used in phonetic transcription^[15]

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets[edit]

• 𐤆 : Semitic letter Zayin, from which the following letters derive
  • Ζ ζ : Greek letter Zeta, from which the following letters derive
    • Ⲍ ⲍ : Coptic letter Zēta
    • 𐌆 : Old Italic Z, which is the ancestor of modern Latin Z
    • 𐌶 : Gothic letter ezec
    • З з : Cyrillic letter Ze

Computing codes[edit]

¹ Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

On the QWERTZ keyboard used in Central Europe the Z replaces the Y of the standard US/UK QWERTY keyboard as the sixth letter of the first row.

Other representations[edit]

See also[edit]

• Bourbaki dangerous bend symbol, U+2621 ☡ CAUTION SIGN
• Z with stroke, Ƶ
• Zed
• Zee
• Z flag
• Z (military symbol)

References[edit]

External links[edit]

Полезное

Из Википедии — свободной энциклопедии

У этого термина существуют и другие значения, см. Z (значения).

Символы со сходным начертанием: Ζ · Հ · Ⴭ · ⴭ · 乙 · ℤ

Буква латиницы Z
Zz
Изображение
◄ V W X Y Z [ ] ^ ► ◄ v w x y z { | } ~ ►
Характеристики
Название	Z: latin capital letter z z: latin small letter z
Юникод	Z: U+005A z: U+007A
HTML-код	Z‎: Z или Z z‎: z или z
UTF-16	Z‎: 0x5A z‎: 0x7A
URL-код	Z: %5A z: %7A

Z, z — 26-я и последняя буква базового латинского алфавита.

Протосемитская це	Финикийская зен (𐤆)	Греческая дзета (Ζ ζ)	Этрусская Z	Латинская Z

Иногда используется вариативное написание буквы — Ƶ.

История

В архаическом латинском алфавите буква Z занимала седьмое место — по аналогии с греческой Ζ (дзетой). В 312 году до н. э. цензор Аппий Клавдий Цек, занимавшийся реформой алфавита, удалил эту букву как излишнюю: звук, который она обозначала, перешёл в R. Она была возвращена лишь в I веке до н. э., уже в конец алфавита, для передачи греческих слов.

Названия и произношение буквы в различных языках

• англ. zed, зэд — [z]. В американском английском произносится, как zee, зи.
• лат. zeta, зета, дзета — [z] или [d͡z].
• нем. zett, цет — [t͡s] или [z] (в заимствованиях).

Употребление

Обозначения

В ряде отраслей науки z или Z являются стандартными обозначениями для физических и математических величин^[1].

• В математике z:
  • третья координата (аппликата) в декартовой системе координат (после x и y);
  • осевая координата в цилиндрической системе координат;
  • третья неизвестная в системе уравнений (после x и y);
  • комплексная переменная.
• В математике ℤ () — множество целых чисел
• В физике Z — полное сопротивление (импеданс).
• В ядерной физике и химии Z — зарядовое число атомного ядра (синонимы: атомный номер, атомное число, порядковый номер химического элемента) — количество протонов в атомном ядре.
• В физике элементарных частиц Z — нейтральный векторный бозон, переносчик слабого взаимодействия.
• В кристаллографии Z — количество формульных единиц в элементарной кристаллической ячейке.
• В термодинамике и статистической физике Z (от нем. Zustandssumme «сумма по состояниям») — статистическая сумма по состояниям ансамбля, z — статистическая сумма по состояниям одной молекулы.
• В термодинамике Z — коэффициент сжимаемости газа.
• В электрохимии z — зарядовое число иона; зарядовое число электрохимической реакции.
• В астрономии и космологии z — красное смещение.
• В метрологии:
  • z — дробная десятичная приставка СИ, зепто- (10⁻²¹); Z — кратная десятичная приставка СИ, зетта- (10²¹).
  • Z иногда используется для обозначения времени по Гринвичу (от нем. Zeit, время).

В делопроизводстве

• В документах и бланках при их заполнении росчерком в форме буквы Z перечёркивают пустое место, чтобы избежать несанкционированного дописывания текста.

В культуре

• Отличительный знак благородного разбойника Зорро.

Zz Zz Zz Zz
Название по-русски: зет. Код НАТО: Zulu (/ˈzuːluː/, [зу́лу]). Азбука Морзе: −−··
● ○ ○ ● ● ● Шрифт Брайля	Семафорная азбука	Флаги международного свода сигналов	Амслен

Военный символ

Буква Z стала милитаристским символом в 2022 году после того, как Россия вторглась на территорию Украины. Вооружённые силы РФ обозначали свою военную технику буквами «Z», «V», «O». При этом их значение оставалось неизвестным — даже исследователь Bellingcat Арик Толер, следивший за российско-украинской войной с 2014 года, заявил, что никогда прежде не встречал эту символику^[2]. По этой причине отдельные эксперты предположили, что выбор знаков был ситуативным и больше связан с простотой рисунка^[3]. Спустя несколько дней после начала вторжения латинские буквы «Z» и «V» начали воспринимать как официальную символику вооружённых сил РФ^[4]. Однако, согласно официальной позиции Министерства обороны России, получившей огласку в мае 2022 года, символы «не являются официальными воинскими символами (обозначениями) и не несут специальной нагрузки»^[5].

Символы стали активно использоваться в пропаганде. Россияне, поддерживающие вторжение, используют букву «Z» на своих машинах и одежде, но чаще знак появляется на ​​провластных демонстрациях, билбордах, зданиях и в виде инсталляций. Государство организует «Z»-флешмобы в социальных сетях и на улицах. На выступающих против использования «Z» в России периодически заводят уголовные дела. «Z» часто окрашивают в цвета георгиевской ленты^[6][7]. По заявлению специалиста по внутренней и внешней политике России Марии Снеговой, оранжево-чёрная буква «Z» создаёт связь между продолжающимся вторжением и празднованием победы во Второй мировой войне и поддерживает национальную идею России как «исторического победителя»^[8].

Символ часто сравнивают со свастикой и называют «звастикой», и считают её символом российского тоталитаризма. Публичное изображение знака с целью поддержки действий российской армии запрещено в Эстонии, Молдавии, Литве, Латвии, ряде земель Германии, а также же на Украине.^{[источник не указан 147 дней]}

См. также

• Список латинских букв

Примечания

1. ↑ International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (1993). Quantities, Units and Symbols in Physical Chemistry, 2nd edition, Oxford: Blackwell Science. ISBN 0-632-03583-8. Electronic version.
2. ↑ Eliza Mackintosh. Russian tanks emblazoned with ’Z’ were first spotted on Ukraine’s border. Here’s how the letter became a pro-war symbol. CNN (8 марта 2022). Дата обращения: 16 июля 2022. Архивировано 7 марта 2022 года.
3. ↑ Буквы V и Z: что они означают и на каких войнах использовались ранее. TCH (23 мая 2022). Дата обращения: 15 июля 2022. Архивировано 14 июля 2022 года.
4. ↑ Буква Z — официальный (и зловещий) символ российского вторжения в Украину. Мы попытались выяснить, кто это придумал, — и вот что из этого получилось. Signal, Meduza (15 марта 2022). Дата обращения: 15 июля 2022. Архивировано 24 марта 2022 года.
5. ↑ Минобороны РФ заявило, что символы Z и V «не являются официальными и не несут специальной нагрузки». Meduza. Дата обращения: 9 августа 2022.
6. ↑ Dean, Jeff. The letter Z is becoming a symbol of Russia’s war in Ukraine. But what does it mean?, NPR (9 марта 2022). Дата обращения: 9 августа 2022.
7. ↑ Буква Z как один из ключевых элементов российской пропаганды. ГОЛОС АМЕРИКИ. Дата обращения: 9 августа 2022.
8. ↑ How ‘Z’ became a symbol for supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Washington Post. Дата обращения: 9 августа 2022.

Ссылки

• Z на сайте Scriptsource.org (англ.)
• z на сайте Scriptsource.org (англ.)

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