Zhe (Cyrillic)

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Heading=Cyrillic letter Zhe


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Zhe (Ж, ж) is the letter of Cyrillic alphabet which represents the voiced postalveolar fricative IPA|/ʒ/ (), similar to the "s" in the English word trea"s"ure or the "g" in the English word mira"g"e.

It is the seventh letter of the Bulgarian alphabet, the eighth letter in the Belarusian, Macedonian, Russian and Serbian alphabets, and the ninth in the Ukrainian alphabet. It is also found in most non-Slavic languages written in the Cyrillic script, representing either IPA|/ʒ/, IPA|/ʐ/, or IPA|/dʒ/. In the old Cyrillic alphabet, zhe was the seventh letter. Its name was Unicode|живѣте ("živěte", 'live' imperative), and it did not have a numerical value.

It is not known how the character for zhe was derived. No similar letter exists in Greek, Latin or any other alphabet of the time, though there is some graphic similarity with its Glagolitic counterpart zhivete Unicode|Ⰶ (
shin ש, the bottom one inverted. Sha ш, which represents the unvoiced counterpart of zhe, is one of several Cyrillic letters that derive directly from Hebrew letters.

Zhe is most often transliterated as "zh" for English-language readers (as in Doctor Zhivago, Доктор Живаго, or Georgy Zhukov, Георгий Жуков). In linguistics, and for Central European readers it is most often transliterated as "ž", with a háček—this scientific transliteration convention comes from Croatian spelling, and is also used in Roman alphabets for several other Slavic languages. Thus, Leonid Brezhnev's surname (Леонид Брежнев) could be spelled "Brežnev", as it is spelled in a number of Slavic languages. The closest Polish counterpart is "ż" and, in some instances, "rz".

Zhe is one of the first letters learned by children who learn to write in Slavic languages, because it looks quite like a young frog floating in a pond, and in these languages жаба ("žaba") means ‘frog’ or ‘toad’. Also, it looks like an insect, and the Russian and Ukrainian for ‘beetle’ is жук ("žuk"), the Russian onomatopoeic word for ‘buzz’ (as a beetle) is жужжать ("žužžat’") with three zhes.

Zhe can also be used in Leet speak or Faux Cyrillic in place of the letter "x".

Code positions

Its HTML entities are: Ж or Ж for capital and ж or ж for small letter.

ee also

*Voiced retroflex fricative
*Voiced postalveolar fricative
*Ʒ, ʒ - Ezh (letter)
*J, j - Latin
*Ż, ż
*Ź, ź
*Ž, ž