Zhe (Cyrillic)

Zhe (Ж ж; italics: Ж ж) is a letter of the Cyrillic script.

It commonly represents the voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ (listen), like the pronunciation of ⟨s⟩ in "treasure".

Zhe is romanized as ⟨zh⟩ or ⟨ž⟩.

History

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 Ⰶ (Image: ) which represents the same sound. However, the origin of Zhivete, like that of most Glagolitic letters, is unclear. One possibility is that it was formed from two connecting Hebrew letters Shin ⟨ש⟩, the bottom one inverted. The letter Sha ⟨Ш⟩, which represents the unvoiced counterpart of Zhe, is one of several Cyrillic letters which were derived directly from Hebrew letters.

In the Early Cyrillic alphabet the name of Zhe was живѣтє (živěte), meaning "live" (imperative).

Zhe was not used in the Cyrillic numeral system.

In modern typefaces, zhe is displayed as two Kas, the first one reversed, with both sharing a common vertical stroke.

Usage

Zhe is used in the alphabets of all Slavic languages using a Cyrillic alphabet, and of most non-Slavic languages which use a Cyrillic alphabet. The position in the alphabet and the sound represented by the letter vary from language to language.

Language	Position in alphabet	represented sound
Belarusian	8th	voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/
Bulgarian	7th	voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/
Macedonian	8th	voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/
Russian	8th	voiced retroflex fricative /ʐ/
Serbian	8th	voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/
Ukrainian	9th	voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/
Uzbek (1940–1994)	8th	voiced postalveolar affricate /dʒ/
Mongolian	8th	voiceless postalveolar affricate /tʃ/
Dungan	8th	voiced retroflex fricative /ʐ/
other non-Slavic languages		voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/

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

Transliteration

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 Czech spelling, and is also used in the Latin alphabets of several other Slavic languages (Slovak, Sorbian, Serbo-Croatian, and Slovene). Thus, Leonid Brezhnev's surname (Леонид Брежнев) could be transliterated as "Brežnev", as it is spelled in a number of Slavic languages. The closest Polish counterpart is ⟨ż⟩ and, in some instances, ⟨rz⟩.

Related letters and other similar characters

• Ӂ ӂ : Cyrillic letter Zhe with breve
• Ź ź : Latin letter Z with acute
• Ž ž : Latin letter Z with caron
• Ż ż : Latin letter Z with dot above
• J j : Latin letter J
• Ʒ ʒ : Latin letter Ezh

Computing codes

character	Ж		ж
Unicode name	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ZHE		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ZHE
character encoding	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	1046	0416	1078	0436
UTF-8	208 150	D0 96	208 182	D0 B6
Numeric character reference	Ж	Ж	ж	ж
KOI8-R and KOI8-U	246	F6	214	D6
Code page 855	234	EA	233	E9
Code page 866	134	86	166	A6
Windows-1251	198	C6	230	E6
ISO-8859-5	182	B6	214	D6
Macintosh Cyrillic	134	86	230	E6

External links

• The Wiktionary entry for Ж
• The Wiktionary entry for ж