Zhe (Cyrillic)

Template:Short description Template:Infobox grapheme

Zhe, from Alexandre Benois' 1904 alphabet book

Zhe, Zha, or Zhu, sometimes transliterated as Že (Ж ж; italics: Ж ж) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It commonly represents the voiced retroflex sibilant {{#invoke:IPA|main}} (listen) or voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/, like the pronunciation of the Template:Angbr in "measure". It is also often used with D (Д) to approximate the sound in English of the Latin letter J with a ДЖ combination. Zhe is romanized as Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr or Template:Angbr.

HistoryEdit

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 Template:Angbr (Image: File:Glagolitic capital letter Zhivete.svg) which represents the same sound. However, the origin of Zhivete, like that of most Glagolitic letters, is unclear.Template:Citation needed

One possibility is that it was formed from the pronunciation of Hebrew letter Zayin Template:Angbr combined with the Hebrew letter Shin Template:Angbr letter, to eventually form the Modern Hebrew letter of Zhayin Template:Angbr, with a geresh Template:Angbr on top for distinction.

Zhe may also be derived from the [[Coptic alphabet|Coptic letter Template:Transliteration]] ⟨Template:Coptic⟩, supported by the phonetic value (Template:Transliteration represents the sound /d͡ʒ/ in Coptic) and shape of the letter, which the Glagolitic counterpart Zhivete Template:Angbr resembles even more closely. The form of the letter also may be derived from an Egyptian hieroglyph depicting a drill: <hiero>U29\</hiero>

Some Ukrainian scholars argue that it represents the shape of a beetle, since Zhe is the first phoneme in the Slavic word Template:Script (žuk), meaning "beetle".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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

Zhe was not used in the Cyrillic numeral system.

UsageEdit

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 {{#invoke:IPA\|main}}	zh
Bulgarian	7th	voiced postalveolar fricative {{#invoke:IPA\|main}}	zh
Macedonian	8th	voiced postalveolar fricative {{#invoke:IPA\|main}}	ž or zh
Russian	8th	voiced retroflex fricative {{#invoke:IPA\|main}}	zh
Serbian	8th	voiced retroflex fricative {{#invoke:IPA\|main}}	ž
Ukrainian	9th	voiced postalveolar fricative {{#invoke:IPA\|main}}	zh
Uzbek (1940–1994)	8th	voiced postalveolar affricate {{#invoke:IPA\|main}} or voiced postalveolar fricative {{#invoke:IPA\|main}} (in Russian loanwords only)	j
Mongolian	8th	voiceless postalveolar affricate {{#invoke:IPA\|main}}	j
Kazakh	10th	voiced alveolo-palatal fricative {{#invoke:IPA\|main}}, sometimes voiced postalveolar affricate {{#invoke:IPA\|main}} in speech	j
Kyrgyz	8th	voiced postalveolar affricate {{#invoke:IPA\|main}}	j
Dungan	8th	voiced retroflex fricative {{#invoke:IPA\|main}}	r
other non-Slavic languages		voiced postalveolar fricative {{#invoke:IPA\|main}}

Zhe can also be used in Leet speak or faux Cyrillic in place of the letter Template:Angbr, or to represent the symbol of the rap duo Kris Kross (a ligature of two back-to-back letter K's).

TransliterationEdit

Ж is most often transliterated as the digraph Template:Angbr 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 Template:Angbr, 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. Polish uses its own convention for transliteration of Cyrillic according to which ж is transliterated with the Polish letter ż (which is pronounced {{#invoke:IPA|main}} in Polish). Ж is often transliterated Template:Angbr in Mongolian because of its pronunciation as {{#invoke:IPA|main}}.