Zhe (Cyrillic)
Zhe (Ж ж; italics: Ж ж) is a letter of the Cyrillic script.
It commonly represents the voiced palato-alveolar sibilant /ʒ/ (listen), or the somewhat similar voiced retroflex sibilant /ʐ/ (listen) in Russian and in other languages, 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.
In the Early Cyrillic alphabet the name of Zhe was живѣтє (živěte), meaning "live" (imperative).
Zhe was not used in the Cyrillic numeral system.
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 | Romanization |
|---|---|---|---|
| Belarusian | 8th | voiced retroflex fricative /ʐ/ | ž |
| Bulgarian | 7th | voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ | zh |
| Macedonian | 8th | voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ | zh |
| Russian | 8th | voiced retroflex fricative /ʐ/ | zh |
| Serbian | 8th | voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ | ž |
| Ukrainian | 9th | voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ | zh |
| Uzbek (1940–1994) | 8th | voiced postalveolar affricate /dʒ/ or voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ (in Russian loanwords only) | j |
| Mongolian | 8th | voiceless postalveolar affricate /tʃ/ | ch |
| Kyrgyz | 8th | voiced postalveolar affricate /dʒ/ | j |
| Dungan | 8th | voiced retroflex fricative /ʐ/ | r |
| 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⟩, or to represent the symbol of the rap duo Kris Kross (a ligature of two back-to-back letter K's).
Transliteration
Ж is most often transliterated as the digraph, ⟨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. the 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⟩. It is often transliterated ⟨j⟩ in Mongolian, due to its pronunciation as IPA: [t͡ʃ].
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 | ||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | decimal | hex |
| Unicode | 1046 | U+0416 | 1078 | U+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 |
